


The Lost City of the South

by Valkurion



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Adventure, Disney, F/F, Fluff, Inspired, Lesbian, Love, mild violence, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6093616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkurion/pseuds/Valkurion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asami Sato, Phd, has dreamt since childhood of finding the legendary lost city of the Southern Water Tribe. She works at a museum she hates for people who drove her father's name into the gutter until one day, after her pitch meeting it cancelled, she receives a visit from a very extravagant and mysterious woman, followed by an offer from an old friend of her father's. With a team of the very best headed by Commander Zaheer they head underground and to the ends of the earth to locate the ruins of the South, only Princess Korra is waiting for them...<br/>Inspired by Disney's 'Atlantis: the Lost Empire'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. She Came Down the Chimney

Chapter 1 - She Came Down the Chimney

The fibre of the pages were rough and therefore somehow tantalising as Asami Sato ran her slender fingers along the bindings of her father’s tome. He had left it her years ago, before his sudden and tragic demise to the menace that was cancer. Since then she had been alone, on her own in university studying archaeology for a reason lost to her because of her father’s death. She didn’t mind having her level of qualification in her field. What she did mind was being shifted to the basement of the museum to continue her theories and research, she was sharing an office with the boiler.

She had been in the Republic City Natural History Museum for months, developing her research into various fields and improving her methods of archaeology, however she was still no better than a preschooler with a bucket and spade. The one thing however she was more passionate about than anything in the entire world was the predicted location of the long lost ‘City of the South’ which had been believed to be consumed by some form of natural calamity over ten thousand years ago.

For years she had obsessed over the myths and legends of the place, what it might have been like, what the culture may have been, what the women may have looked like. The biggest question on her mind was constantly what would the city be like if it actually survived the calamity and was simply waiting for her young, emerald eyes to see thousands of miles away. That had become her life goal over the past years. She remembered her father fantasising about the city with her when she was a tween. 

The board of investors for expeditions didn’t understand her young yet brilliant mind, didn’t understand how passionate she felt about her and her father’s dream, and the book in front of her would hopefully supply her with the knowledge and the bargaining information she would need to convince the board to finally fund an expedition. 

‘In a single day and night of wrath and calamity, the City of the Southern Water Tribe disappeared into the depths of the abyss, doomed for eternity’ - Wan Shi Tong.

Asami had always taken the famous excerpt as a challenge and as of late, it was becoming evermore closer to a real contradiction. 

Her research had led her to a myth of a text, another tome of sorts collated from different sources all over multiple thousands of years. It had been believed to be passed down from generation to generation, from holder to receiver and holder again, each adding to it and each bringing new information to it on the supposed location of the City of the South. Because of this, Asami had arrived at the train of thought that the original location of the city had changed over the ten thousand years because of the constant rotation and movement of the planet and its tectonic plates. Until she could find this book she would be unable to make an accurate assumption of the general location of the city. Still she denied the urge to stop searching for answers. 

Her ‘office’ space was taken up by the various maps and literature all discussing and circling on the City of the South. Her single blackboard was covered in a map of some island near the North Pole. It was here where her findings had made her believe this tome was hidden, the flip side of the board having some new sort of glyphs underscored by the words ‘It lies in the West’ written neatly in a clean white chalk. Towards the back of the room Ms Sato had carefully and meticulously laid out masks and helms to pose as filler for the board of investors. 

This was a rehearsal of her roughly planned pitch to the board, and this time she would either secure her funding or leave the museum for good. 

She closed the book, placing it on her podium in front of the blackboard and rolling up the sleeves of her blouse, she meant business. A sleek finger pushed her glasses the length of her equally slender and attractive nose. 

“Good afternoon gentlemen,” she began with her light and feathery tone, meaning to impress the inanimate and silent masks, “first off I would like to thank the board for taking time out from your ‘busy’ schedules to hear my proposal.” Again. She thought, because this was the third time in as many years that had managed to secure a pitch. It wasn’t because her evidence was fluid or because she was too young. It was because of the reputation of her father, Hiroshi. 

He had been the CEO of Future Industries for decades and near the time of his death some were calling his practices into question, where his money was going and how the business was being procured. His almost tyrannical runnings of the business earned him infamy among the business scene and thus this transferred to Asami’s wanting to start her expedition. Those with the money who had invested with Future Industries were those who would be dangling the money in front of her face and they believed that investing in the plucky and bubbly archaeologist meant investing in the legacy of Hiroshi Sato, the man who could have lost billions. Instead he was the man who only stole hundreds of the thousands. He spent his last week of life free from the cameras of the courtroom. Asami was so grateful for that above all else, that at least he didn’t die in prison. 

She had promised to him at his funeral that she would find the city for him. To prove that his judgement wasn’t as bad as the press made it out to be, for the memories that she loved of him when she was a mere child and for the name of Future Industries, which was now in the hands of scrupulous bastards who loved the smell of yuans more than their wives.

She exhaled her thoughts, coming back to the pitch she had worked weeks on preparing. “Now we have all heard, one way or another, of the lost City of the Southern Water Tribe” she states somewhat monotonously, bringing a pile of papers and books from her source pile to the podium; a few sheets and laminations of historical portraits and carvings from the many peoples of the world. Most of them were of the Air Nomads in the Southern and Eastern Air Temples. Some others were the obviously brutish craftsmanship of the Earth Kingdom of old and only a few were the intelligent and majestic patterns of the Fire Nation. Surprisingly none of the accounts showed the flow and ebb of the Northern Water Tribe, which Asami had always found odd and somewhat disrespectful, especially if the North did have a sister tribe millennia ago. It intrigued her to ask more, to find out everything and take all the marbles if she ever got her expedition off the ground. 

“Now the City of the Southern Water Tribe was arguably home to a somewhat excluded yet very spiritualistic civilisation over ten thousand years ago,” she began to explain, pressing her glasses up to the bridge of her nose again and standing up the pictures of the various carvings. “According to one of the texts in the library of Wan Shi Tong, the City was suddenly struck by a cataclysmic event that caused the entire city to sink far beneath the Southern Ocean” she gestured to another map of the Four Nations that made up the planet off to the side, keeping her professional and stiff posture that occasionally made her back hurt from the straightness. 

She had chosen her outfit meticulously for the day; a complimenting slightly pinkish blouse with a darker and more crimson waistcoat to accompany the shade of the same colour in her black hair, matching her reddish eye shadow and lips. Her pencil skirt had been replaced by her long business pants of the same colour as her waistcoat with her full coat waiting on the back of her desk chair off to the side. She had decided to ignore the tie, it was too much for her relatively busty torso with the blouse. 

“Now some of you gentlemen may ask, why the Southern Water Tribe?” She had really been asking herself the same question for the past few months, really thinking about if it was worth the cost or the manpower or even the nerve of asking for a third time. But the memory of her father was too strong a reason to carry on with the dedication. “Well gentlemen,” now the pictures and sketches were coming out for her faux audience, “ten thousand years before the Earth Government was formed, before the Rise and Fall of the Equalists even, the Southern Tribe, possessed an immense power source of some kind” she was flicking through different pictures of what seemed to be carvings of a people, surrounded by an energy field of sorts and praying to a sun like object in the sky. “This power source was more advanced than electricity It allowed them to create advanced healing methods, medicines, even the power of flight.” Her glasses were beginning to fall once again from the excessive shaking motions her head was making.

Her head was brought down to the level of the pictures, stopping on one which looked like some technical machine drawing of a battery. “Now some of you may say this impossible but no, not for the people of the South” she stamped, continuing to flick through the pictures of the carvings. “Most of the ancient cultures of the world agreed that this power source the people possessed was more powerful than steam, or coal, even more powerful than our modern combustion engine.” She took a gap to breathe and collect her thoughts, thinking of what was coming next in her prepared speech. 

“Gentlemen. I propose, that we find the Southern Tribe, find this so called ‘power source’ and return to the United Republic with it in hand” she gestured triumphantly towards the ceiling with her right fist as she finished. She usually never got carried away with her thoughts or her passions outside of tinkering with what she could, usually her stove back at her apartment. This was a whole new kind of different. This was the Southern Water Tribe, something that could well and truly exist and be waiting for her to gaze upon with her bright and intelligent young eyes. And she wanted to so deeply. To see her father’s passion and her passion be real, to be there, to be waiting.

Now her pictures had ceased, coming to the last and most important image. A page from a text with the image of a Northern Tribesman with another book in his possession. “Now this gentleman,” she referred to the picture, placing her index finger near the brown tome clutched in the man’s arms, “is a page from a text out of the Northern Tribe talking about a book called the Fisherman’s Account.” 

The Holy Grail when it came to the lost City of the South. She had obsessed over the very idea of finding the book for decades. Instead of finding the right girl for her in university she instead scoured every source she could to find a mere mention of the tome, of where it might be or how it might look. And now she was certain she’d found the location. 

“Now the Fisherman’s Account is believed to contain various sources, including a first person account, regarding the location of the Lost Tribe.” At this time she shifted from behind the podium to in front of her blackboard, stretching to flip the top of the board back to the text and the translation, again showing the words, ‘It lies in the West’.

She retrieves her yardstick again, to point to the glyphs at the top of the rather large board since it stood almost a foot taller than she. “According to this millennia old series of Fire Nation lettering we always believed that the Fisherman’s Account lied towards the West of the known world, presumably within the Fire Nation itself but.” She moved to the right side of the room, closer to the exit to grab a small plank of ancient wood, rather misplaced in her room full of paper and maps and dioramas. 

She held the plank of aged and stained wood to the audience. “As you can see gentlemen from the small text on this piece of Air Nation wood. One of the words on the board, had been mistranslated” she said with a smile. Although she hadn’t studied in languages in university she still retained a natural talent for solving the little equations that letters provided. The different glyphs were much like math to her and her genius for it carried over most efficiently. This latest assumed victory over the ten thousand year language barrier had really left her pleased. 

“So, gentlemen, by replacing the incorrect word with the correct we can now discover that the Account does not reside in the West of the world” at this time she rubbed out the last word with her bare fast and picked up the chalk from the table behind the board, writing in the correct word ‘East’. “But it resides in the East of the world.”

Pause for dramatic effect Sato. You got them eating out of your hands. At least she would have, if the phone hadn’t have started to ring at that exact moment, causing her to drop the chalk and the plank of hundred year old wood right on her foot, resulting in a quick yet harsh wince leaving her lips.

The presentation was called to a close and she was back on the clock, throwing herself over the board to answer the telephone on her desk. 

“This is the Office of Asami Sato Phd, Asami Sato speaking” she answered enthusiastically. She always enjoyed answering her own personal office telephone with her correct title and name. It was one of the little quirks that made her smile whenever she announced it. However much to her disappointment the caller was simply requesting her to fix the boiler at the back of her room due to the heating in one of the more higher up professor's’ office being a ‘little low’. Over a year in this dump and I’m still down here. 

Nevertheless, she was a slave to the institution still, and that required that she work her magic on the boiler and aid her fellow intellectuals and academics. 

In a flash she was suddenly on the other side of the room with the burst of triumphant wind in her breast gone and replaced with a flat series of low notes charging from her chest to her ears, reminding her of her position and her reputation; the daughter of Hiroshi Sato and the laughing stock of the archaeological world. For now. 

She spun the valves and twisted the pipes, ending her magic tough with the rough whack of a wrench on anything really, usually the biggest of the pipes to allow the air to flow more fluidly towards the higher levels. It was the only time her extensive knowledge of automobiles transferred into the world of learning and higher thinking, in which she really had no part in. She was just there, among the crowd and begging for one moment to show the world that she could contribute, not take away from it. But the truth was that nobody wanted to listen. She was a woman shouting in a locked and sound proofed room, where nobody would ever make contact. And she despised it to extent of her heart burning at hot as the boiler she walked away from. 

She leaped back over the blackboard to the scatty woman assistant on the other end of the line, waiting for the ‘boiler girl’ to accomplish her mediocre task. 

“How’s that? Yeah. Bye” she finished flatly, ending her breath with a sigh. She wished so for the expedition, if not for the chance to find the City then for the chance to leave the museum, at least for a few months, to catch herself and forged her identity anew. Only today her dreams would be crushed by those who owned her, owned her destiny. 

The phone rang again, another woman on the line. This time Asami didn’t even bother to announce herself, not that she needed to. 

“This is Asami Sato Phd?” The woman asked over the phone. Asami only graced her with a grunt of confirmation. The woman sounded as fake as Sato’s faux audience in the back of the room, with bad news on her breath and the most annoying voice imaginable to accompany it. “Great. I’m calling from the office of Mr Raikou informing you that your meeting with the board of investors has been moved from three thirty to two.”

Asami looked at the clock. Two fifteen. What the hell? She asked herself in the space it took for the assistant to take a quick sip of her tea, voicing her slurp over the phone. “Um?” Was Asami’s response, until the woman cut her off.

“And since you missed your meeting the board has had no choice but to deny your request to funding for,” she takes a break to read the note in front of her, “the Search for the Lost Southern Water Tribe.” Asami took another sighed breath, her blood temperature rising at the shattering of her one chance, her better chance. Before she could even form a curse by way of reply the woman ended the call rather abruptly. 

What the actual hell? They cannot do this to me!

The drive home was just plain depressing. The radio wasn’t turned on; she was too crushed to be bothered with the joyous sound of the normal jive that came on every day and night. Her work shift was dull and dry and just as sad as every other day was without direction. She thought about Hiroshi far more than any other day after the phone call. Dad wouldn’t give up. Hell he’d fund the thing himself. Except there was no rational way she could ever afford to find the Account on her own, forget about the tribe. She was defeated, done, kaput. 

The key entered the door of its own free will, Asami consciously ignoring the note from her landlord on the crappy woodwork of the door. Something about there being no electricity because she had forgotten a payment. Like she hardly cared an ounce. She had downed a full bottle of whiskey before climbing the stairs to her apartment and by now was really feeling it.

She entered completely out of her mind, even flicking the light switch and then remembering there would be no light waiting for her. It had started to rain now and the occasional strike of lightning gave her a brief moment of light to see an out of place sight sitting on her armchair near the far window. 

“Asami Sato, Phd, I presume?” The slender and seductive woman teased from the chair. She was dressed rather scandalously with a black dress covering her various curves and her rather nice chest. Not that Asami was sober enough to look anywhere she may have wanted to.

She stood directly underneath her ceiling fan, shocked as to how the hell this woman was sitting in her apartment without a key to enter. All other methods of breaking and entering were lost to her drunkenness. 

“Who the hell are you? How did you even get in here?” Asami asked, progressively more into a mild drunk and more angry as she continued. Her briefcase now dropped from her hand onto the floor as the woman flicked her fringe of brownish black hair away from her dark green eyes. 

She inhaled a puff of cool air, Asami noticed a long cigarette in her gloved hand. “I came down the chimney” she said sarcastically, Sato not even registering it. “Ho, ho, ho.” Asami cringed at the seductive pass. She was too drunk and depressed for any flirting and more so from a complete stranger, even if she was wearing a weak black dress.

“My name is Kuvira” she finally divulged, flicking the ash from the tip of her cigarette and then immediately taking another drag. Again she flicked her hair away as Asami checked her glasses to ensure that the woman was indeed real and it wasn’t just the whiskey talking. “I’m acting on behalf of my prestigious employer. He has recently taken a keen, well shall we say interest, in your research” she explained, finishing with another drag of her cigarette. 

Asami was completely gobsmacked. Who? What? By now she wished she hadn’t downed the whiskey; she had no clue what was going yet she still heard a little of what Kuvira was telling her. An employer with an interest in Asami Sato, Phd. That never happened to her so this was already tantalising enough to peak her particular interest. 

She walked a little closer towards the mysterious Kuvira, placing her hands on the arms of the red leather armchair, causing the intruder to smile slightly at her forward nerve.

“Who’s your employer Miss Kuvira?”

She smiled more intently, she had Asami hook, line and sinker. It was precisely as Mr Varrick had instructed her.


	2. A Friend of Her Father's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami learns more about her father, by meeting a very old and close friend of Hiroshi's. Following her exchange with the wild and mysterious Mister Varrick he puts to her a choice and an offer; take a long lost book and follow her dream, with his backing...

The sudden clash of thunder jolted Asami Sato into self awareness in the lush leather seat of the automobile with the dark haired beauty that was Kuvira say tentatively next to her. Her shadowed eyes were gently shut and her strong yet slender arms gloved and folded to allow the fur boa to insulate her neck from the cold. It was already making the archaeologist shiver somewhat, with another crackle of thunder blasting its way through the late night sky with a flash following. 

The flare lit up the property the wagon was approaching; tall and sprawling at the top of the hill as they reached the gate. It was grand; illustrious and shrouded in mystery just like the estate it was gate-keeping with a plaque on the left pillar that Asami had only just made out by the time the car pulled up past the iron bars and into the driveway leading upward. She remembered another flash lit up the one word on the plaque, ‘Varrick’. 

When the car pulled over to the main doorway leading into the house Kuvira smiled, a long and evasive yet certainly sly and seductive grin that signalled that the young and out her depth academic was in for a time at the estate. 

Kuvira exited the car first, extending her gloved hand out to take Asami’s to lead her indoors quickly. The archaeologist was so far from her comfort zone she was practically tingling with the rush of nerves and the cold swarming around her. Even her late father’s estate wasn’t nearly as large as Varrick’s, she assumed the owner was named Varrick from the plaque at the gate. 

“So I’m guessing he has a few yuans lying around” Asami remarked as her hostess pushed the grand wooden door ajar, snapping at the comment with a scolding look. 

“You may want to keep comments like those to yourself Miss Sato,” Kuvira warned her, a look of certainty in her misty and dark eyes. They entered rather rapidly after that. All in one motion they were suddenly through the threshold and Kuvira was removing her fur and adjusting the straps of her frail and flattering dress. “Mister Varrick has millions in funds and works hard for it. He deserves respect” Kuvira demanded broodingly. By that Asami could already tell that she devoted a huge degree of loyalty to this mysterious millionaire for some reason the young scholar would never find out. 

The main hall was vast, vast and huge and spacious and simply grand; like an airstrip with decor. There were statues, busts, sets of armour and ancient swords draping the walls from the door to the very back where the main staircase lay leading to the menagerie of rooms further into the mansion. Asami Sato was in awe, struck by the rustic aesthetic of the hallway and how it was double the size and grandeur of one her father had before he passed. The most unusual thing wasn’t the size and over expense of the house, but the fact that every light was switched off; not a single source of glow was to be found anywhere Asami could see. It was as if no one had lived there for months if not years.

“Are you done gawking?” Kuvira was suddenly asked, inquisitive and intrusive, stepping prudently on Asami’s figurative toes while she spun around the room identifying all the artifacts that draped the walls. The mysterious woman was already stood by what appeared to be an elevator, her arm running down the metal cage with the velvet black gloves still covering her rather toned arms. 

Asami was suddenly caught, stammering her next words while Kuvira tutted, moving her head and stepping into the elevator cage waiting for the guest. 

“This way please,” she called rather seductively. Asami was nervous, perhaps a little too nervous and it was that that caused her to drag her feet, slowly approaching the cage that looked a little too cramped for liking. The idea of sharing a small space with this well dressed and curvaceous stranger hardly met well with her rationality and cool head. After a second Kuvira snapped again. “Step lively now Miss Sato, Mister Varrick doesn’t like to be left waiting.”

Who even was the Mister Varrick? And more importantly what could possibly want with a small time and unknown archaeologist named Asami Sato? it was already weird enough to send a woman to fetch her in the middle of the night but even more ludicrous that she supposedly ‘came down the chimney’.

Still Asami did as she was told, swallowing her nerves and stepping into the elevator with the, what she has sussed out to be, a member of the CIA, or an ex-member. 

Quickly the cage was descending, down and down to the basement as Kuvira was moving her gloved hand all around Asami’s chest and face, folding the collar and making the young woman look presentable. She removed the glasses from her face without word and began cleaning them on a hanky she pulled from her bra.

“You will address him as Mister Varrick or ‘Sir’,” she began, placing the lenses back on the bridge of Asami’s nose and then moving back to the blouse, straightening it out and folding the collar a second time. “You will sit only when asked to be seated,” she moved to the dark hair, damp from the downpour outside and flat from the lack of caring. She brushed a single strand back into the fold and sorted out the tie behind Asami’s head so her hair would look acceptable for the mysterious millionaire. “Keep your sentences short and to the point, are we clear?” 

The elevator came to a short and sudden stop, Asami jerking a little and Kuvira grabbing her by the shoulders, preventing her from falling and all her hard work on the appearance begin for naught. Asami took a breath, nervous as hell again before stepping out on Kuvira’s gesture. She ran her own hand through her hair, causing that single strand to escape the whole and drape down her face, making her look cute yet a little rough or at least stressed. 

“And relax,” she could hear the hostess call behind her. “He doesn’t bite. Often” she finished before closing the cage doors to leave the basement through the route she came.

Sato looked around the basement as she had done the hall, again the same aesthetic only this time the walls were covered in older and more rarer pieces and then photographs. Frames of old men, board meetings of the company Asami had deduced Mister Varrick owned only as her eyes trailed along the far wall around the grand fire place she saw a familiar face. Hiroshi Sato; her dead father. 

He was everywhere, his smile gracing the frames of iron and wood with many more men and women at parties, meetings, conventions and unveiling. Some showed a few of the earlier models of the cars Future Industries had designed, hell one or two showed Hiroshi and this other man standing shaking hands as the red ribbon was cut before a car Asami herself had designed years ago. Who was the other man? 

Just as she thought it she heard a groan behind her; someone stretching as if they were just waking up from a thirteen hour sleep.

She spun on her heels to see it; a man with wild black hair and an even wilder, albeit stupid to some degree moustache and tiny beard clothed in only and loosely tied bright blue bathrobe. She half expected the Mister Varrick to be sat at desk writing something; a check or his memoirs the way Kuvira had alluded to him. But no, he was instead stark naked under a blue bathrobe. Stretching. 

“Finest explorer and businessman I’ve ever met” he grunted as he pulled his entire leg up and around his neck. She was half disgusted and half bewildered, wondering how this man knew her father and how he classed him as an explorer.

“Sorry?” Asami asked on instinct, moving over to the man in the bathrobe 

By now he was wrapping the second leg around his neck, like an aged pretzel. “Blackstone Varrick,” he introduced himself, extending his foot by means of a handshake. Asami politely declined. Feet just were not a thing in her mind, least of all being offered to take one for a handshake, and she had worked on cars all her life. He was hardly phased. “Pleasure to meet ya Asami.” Of course he already knew her name. If he thought so fondly of Hiroshi, and had his basement study littered with photographs of the pair he of course knew of the daughter. she was already seeing the type of person Varrick roughly was. “Care to join me for a little yoga?” He asked mid-grunt again.

She held up her hand again. “Oh no, thank you” she said, turning to look at the only source of light apart from the warmly lit fire; the large wall length and height fish tank. It was marvelous; so high and so wide and filled with all different species that Asami had never had even heard of let alone seen. The only thing that took away from the splendor of it was the grunting from the ‘illustrious’ Mister Blackstone Varrick behind her. Still she liked his name; his name and his bluntness although he was nothing like Kuvira had described now. 

He showed no sign of recognition towards her damp and stressed appearance, nor did he show any interest at her timing. She assumed he would hardly care if she were late or early. It was his house and he would conduct business when he was good and ready. 

She guessed that he eventually got stuck in a position when he stopped grunting after a fit of the noises. She was tempted to turn around to see if he was alright, but he already had the matter well in hand. 

“Awh crap. Zhu Li!” he shouted to somewhere in the room. As Asami did turn around she saw that a woman, presumably his assistant was already by his side and helping him move his useless legs. Now he wasn’t putting in any effort whatsoever, simply allowing his assistant move his body to free him. He looked ridiculous. Ridiculous and completely mad. Suddenly Asami was wondering what she had let herself in for. Was Kuvira being serious by saying he had business to discuss with her?

She tilted her head to look at him on the same level of yaw. “Did you really know my father?” She asked in all seriousness, desperately wanting to know and perhaps a little bit scarred by finding out about another side to her precious father like this. Her eyes told everything the way they glistened with the light reflecting from the fish tank and the thin layer of moisture seeping in from the thought of her father long gone. 

“Oh yeah. Met old Hiroshi here in Republic City,” he pointed to framed photograph over by a small coffee table near them, a smaller frame with a cast of men and women stood in formation. It was a high school class picture, old and withered from being handed from member to member until finally landing in Varrick’s possession. Asami took it in her hands, immediately finding her young father and Varrick beside him, the two of them pulling rather goofy poses for the camera. “Republic Central high, class of ‘46. We stayed close friends until the end of his days.” He let out a blasting laugh mixed in with a thankful cry as Zhu Li pulled him free to relax. “He even dragged me on a few of his crazed and half hunched expeditions.” Mister Varrick let out one least drawn out groan as he straightened up with his assistant lingering, ready to help him change. He stood up. 

“Crazy as a damn winged lemur old Hiroshi, hell we even found a few one time” he finished.

Asami was too confused; the sudden and somewhat unbelievable revelation that her father had this very close friend who roped him into secret expeditions that she had no idea about all while she was presumably still at university. It was all slightly too much for her to comprehend so quickly and Varrick was being so calm and collected about it. He did call for her especially and Asami had completely forgotten that. 

Varrick sighed, remembering Hiroshi himself. “Old Hiroshi spoke of you often Asami. His little archaeologist was going to change the world he always told me.”

“That’s funny he never mentioned you” Asami sneered, somewhat angry at the man before her for holding different memories and remembering a different man to her, like it was some invasion of her fond memories of her father. She was flustered, unable to imagine her father the way Varrick was describing. 

The millionaire simply shook her jeer away, snapping his fingers to signal his assistant to bring forth the changing curtain for him to get dressed appropriately. “Oh he wouldn’t! He knew I liked my privacy” he called from behind the curtain 

It made her giggle a little inside. So far nothing about Varrick, his house nor his character or activities had pointed to him being a private person. From behind the curtain next she heard him cry, “Zhu Li do the thing!” Such an impatient and forceful man. She could see how he was a millionaire. She decided to just be brash.

“Mister Varrick is there a reason in particular that I’m here? I’m very busy with my work--”

“You mean that expedition to the Eastern Air Temple to recover the Fisherman’s Account?” He asked rhetorically, stepping out from the curtain now in a full three piece suit coloured in lush dark and light blues, Zhu Li finishing him off by pumping a spray of cologne to his exposed. He grabbed a cane from a stand nearby. 

Asami was completely caught, silent and dumbstruck at how quickly he had found out her shut down plans. Varrick was obviously not only a millionaire but also a man who could acquire anything, including information at the drop of a hat. 

She tried to edge out an answer, a comeback if anything to his dismantling of her faux excuse to leave. Blackstone Varrick simply smiled at her, swinging his cane dapperly around with the flick of his wrist. He moved over to the fireplace to pour himself a drink, her too, muttering a he walked. “Look on the table Asami, by the fish.”

There was a package sat neatly on the small and round table next to a lamp and a picture of Hiroshi on his own, as if Varrick had taken it. The package was thick and somewhat heavy, the distinct feeling of a hardback that Asami knew all too well from her life in the classroom and then the library and the museum. The wrappings were brown paper, old and bound in string as if it had been left from another century with the words, ‘For My Princess, Change the World -Hiroshi’ printed clearly in her father’s dead handwriting. It couldn’t be. It’s not possible. 

Removing the paper wraps she was trembling, excitement and caution tingling their way down her hands as she untied the string and let the paper fall back to the table to reveal the roughly bound and age old book; The Fisherman’s Account. It was in her hands, its binding rubbing up against her trembling palms and her slender and shocked fingers were running their way across the face, rubbing the wave pattern that represented the South etched in.

“I don’t believe it,” she mouthed, completely gobsmacked as Varrick made his way toward her with two glasses of brandy, refusing to leave his guest without a drink to entertain her. She lowered the book, struggling to tear her eyes away from its beauty and rarity. The rarest book in the history of the world. “This is the Fisherman’s Account” she confirmed, her glasses practically teetering off of the tip of her nose when he pushed the brandy glass to her. She immediately set it on the table as he took a large gulp. He grunted afterwards.

“Mind blowing right?!” He yelled as the brand slid it’s way down his throat. He cackled afterwards, making himself hysterical as she ran her fingers over the face again. “But I wasn’t born yesterday Sato” he began. She was having no doubts in her mind about it.

“Mister Varrick, there are coordinates in here, diagrams, pictures, etchings,” she rolled off as she quickly flicked through the rough and sometimes torn pages, taking in as much little information as she could before her mind would explode from excitement; the prospect that she was right and the South Pole existed. 

Varrick had his eyes closed, taking another gulp before replying with a grunty, “It looks like gibberish to me kiddo” he lured her in.

“That’s because it’s in a dialect and glyphs that haven’t been seen for thousands of years. But I can understand it.” She finished that least part rather rushed and there headstrong, really pouring her heart an knowledge into convincing him that it was the genuine article and that she could indeed understand every syllable roughly that was transcribed. 

Still Varrick was baiting her. He wanted more, a more convincing argument that she was the woman for the job; and she didn’t even know he was doing it. 

With a huff he turned around back to face the fireplace, taking a least sip and then gesturing for his assistant to refill his glass with more brandy. “It’s probably a fake then” he jeered behind a smile he held to himself where she couldn’t see.

Preposterous. No way was the book a fake. She was having none of his nonsensical remarks. “Mister Varrick, Sir. My father would have known if this book were a fake. He would know instantly because he knew how much it meant me, me and him. Hell I would know if it were fake!” She balled. He said nothing, he already had her. 

“Oh?”

“Yes. I would know. I will stake everything I have on this book being the one hundred percent genuine article. I would even stake my damn cat!”

He smiled more excitedly, turning around to let her see, having been convinced, now was the pitch. “Alright then. So what do you want to do with it?” He asked, continuing with the bombardment of questions to judge her. 

“I’ll get funding” she snapped instantly, swaying a little as the thoughts rolled from her mind to her mouth without going through her logic filter. 

“The museum will never believe you. Hell no one will Sato” Varrick countered, halting that line of thought and walking past her closer to the fish tank. She stammered slightly, thinking of where to go next. She was running out of rope of thought and just began saying what she wanted to do really, deep down in her heart. 

“I will show them. I will make them believe me.”

“Like you did today?” He asked sarcastically, the smile not faltering from his mouth as he flicked out the cane and twiddled with his short moustache. 

She was halted yet again but there was no stopping her now. She wanted the book, wanted the chance to go on that expedition to find the city. To prove her father right. To prove herself right and most of all to prove that she could actually do it; find the damn place. 

“It doesn’t matter. Varrick I will find the South on my own if I have to. I will rent a goddamned rowboat!” She shouted at him again, expecting him to finally take her down a notch and calm her down by saying a flat negative. Instead he stood before her nodding his head and clapping slowly, smiling the whole time because she had done it. She had convinced him that she should be the one to go, that she was her father’s daughter and she was worthy to find the city and the boon lying inside.

“Well done kiddo,” he muttered fairly quietly, finishing his small applaud and taking a seat in the chair ready to catch him. “This is exactly what I wanted to hear tonight.” He spun the chair around, now sitting at a rather elongated slab table with a single button where he was sitting. “But forget about the rowboat kid” he sniggered, pressing the button with his crazed finger to raise a full diorama of vehicles from the table. A colossal submarine clad in blue and sprawling out the length of the table roughly accompanied with smaller trucks, oil tankers, lorries, smaller one-manned subs and then slightly larger ones for squad deployment. He knew that if the city existed at all, like Asami knew, it would be under the continent that was the South which meant diving for it. 

“We’ll travel in style” he finished rather proudly, looking over his model fleet. 

Asami was now confused. True the book had been found by her father and being his supposed ‘closest’ friend it therefore went to Varrick until this fateful night but why he fund the entire expedition on the word of a single book and a good friend was beyond her.

“But why?” She simply asked. 

He got up, walking back to the fireplace to gaze at the wall of memories of he and Hiroshi, looking fondly and remembering each and every one of them. Asami joined him, spotting a few that she liked; the high school and university days then the club gatherings, the pair of them working on vehicles and playing chess. It was nice collection of tiny infinites that she never knew about. Maybe if she did it may have been different as he was passing. 

“For years your daddy chewed my ear about stories about that damn book, saying it was real and he was close to finding where it was. I never believed it for a second like the rest. So finally I made a bet with old coot,” he pointed to one specific photograph on the wall with his cane. It was him and Hiroshi shaking hands with money in a small bowl. 

“I said to him ‘Hiroshi, if you ever find that blasted book not only will I fund the entire expedition I’ll kiss you square on the mouth,” he moved to another photo frame on the wall, pointing again with his cane for Asami to see Varrick and her father recovering from what was most definitely a kiss; the Account in Hiroshi’s clutches. “Imagine my embarrassment when he found the damn thing.”

Asami laughed a little, realising that with the combined photographs on the wall and the personality of her father in Varrick’s stories that they were real, as real as her memories of trips to the beach and camping trips in the mountain range as a little girl. 

Varrick walked back to her, placing his hand on her shoulder to comfort the obvious sorrow in her eyes from remembering her dad too much. “Now I know he’s gone kiddo. But Blackstone Varrick is nothing but a man of his word.” His hand was suddenly gone as he extended his cane arm out toward the largest frame; the most heartfelt and warm picture of the two friends together shaking hands and looking toward the camera. 

“You hear that Sato? Varrick’s coming to the afterlife with a clear conscience by thunder!” He yelled at Hiroshi with a laugh on the edge of his proclamation. After the outburst he returned to a calmed mind, looking into the fire. “Your father was a damn great man kiddo. You probably don’t realise just how great really,” he began again, slight bitterness on the horizon and Asami knew full well why. Like she Varrick obviously held the immortalised belief that he was a good man, and that his missteps with the law were the result of the company really. It wasn't fair that he had to go with the reputation he had. He should have died a martyr for technology and innovation as he was his entire life. Varrick didn’t need to go on, she already knew he was deeply saddened by the bureaucrats and penny-pinchers. 

He spun around, drying the tears from his eyes and shaking his cane about. “What are we standing around for girl? We’ve got work to do” he told her, his assistant Zhu Li returning to him with a stack of files and setting them on the table. 

“But Mister Varrick we’ll need a crew” Asami petitioned as he spread apart the files. 

“Taken care of” he snapped in counter as she peered in to see the faces of her new crew. A Doctor, an Engineer, a Geologist, a Demolitions Expert, a Communications Specialist and hell even a Chef. 

From front to back he read off the names he’d worked with before, not stopping for a breath. “Doctor Suyin Beifong and her daughter Opal; sawbones and tinkerer, they look after the crew and the metal, good women. Don’t let Opal’s age fool you, she can work her way through a wagon in almost ten minutes.

“Bolin Montoliere, geology and excavation. Whatever you do don’t ask him about dirt he’ll talk all day,” he move on, not stopping to check she was looking. “P’Li, demo expert; busted her out of a frozen prison one time, it was fun. They’re the same team who brought the book back with your father” he divulged. 

“Where was it?” She asked instinctively, just to find out if she was right from her morning pitch to the heads and hats in her ‘office’.

He slammed a final picture on top of the files, one of all of the crew with Kuvira, Hiroshi and one more butch and tall man who Asami doubt she would ever know. “The Eastern Air Temple” Varrick exclaimed. Just as she had deduced.

“I knew it!” She leaped, correct as usual and celebrating it.

“Now all we need is an expert in the legend” Varrick told her, Zhu Li standing near them with a large mariner’s coat ready for Asami to take headlong. The young archaeologist looked at the assistant and back to Varrick, wondering if all of it was real and it was actually about happen. If she was really about to leave to find the city she had dreamed of for years. Varrick’s eyes told her it was and that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

“The Lost City of the South is waiting Asami. What D'ya say?” 

She took the coat, putting her hands down the sleeves oppositely, tugging it on backwards and not caring, nearly exasperated by the excitement. “I’m your girl Mister Varrick,” she beamed. “I’m so excited I can’t even hold it in” she gleamed. 

She was right. A week later she couldn’t hold it in. The carrots were being chundered off of the deck as the ship ploughed through the main body of ocean towards the South, the city closer now than it had ever been.


	3. The Expedition Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Accepting Mister Varrick's offer placed Asami on a boat heading towards the South with the team on board as well as the plethora of advanced equipment the billionaire enticed her with. Now the journey begins...

“Why carrots?” Asami Sato, Phd, grumbled to herself as she lingered over the railing of the deck of the Zhu Li while is sped along at full speed heading South; closer to the site the team would be diving. In truth she hadn’t even met the team yet; not Doctor Beifong, who she was most excited to meet, not the engineer nor the chef. Although she had been promised by Mister Varrick two weeks ago before leaving on this first voyage that each and every one of them were professionals and the best damn expedition team in the business. Money was no object. Still she grumbled as her lunch poured from her gut and into the sea with the harsh breeze blowing her hair back. Asami struggled to keep her glasses from falling from her face, stuffing them in her coat pocket while she chundered again again.

When the urge to throw the contents of her stomach overboard subsided she groaned again, hoping it was all gone. “Why is it always carrots?” She asked herself. They had always been a menace at the lunch table even as a little girls. Her rationale had always been that carrots were orange and edible and therefore they were evil and made her throw them up every time with fail. Every time. 

She looked up to the sky in merciful confusion. “I didn’t even eat carrots” she muttered before she could feel it again. It came right out and over the deck, completely emptying her gut and leaving her hungry again. Before she could rest and think about moving back to the mess hall for something to settle her stomach there was a rattle over the intercom to indicate it was being turned on and used by that woman on the bridge again.

Asami hadn’t met her either, although there were tales that she was blind and rather short, and certainly older than most if not all on the expedition. The intercom buzzed with a metallic tinge and Asami thought it best that she at least head indoors and let the old woman’s directive lead her.

“Attention,” the gruff old woman yelled almost through the loudspeaker system all over the ship as Asami walked in through the hatch doorway and into the busy corridors. They must be preparing to dive. At that she altered her course to reach the service elevator to lead below decks to where the submarine was docked. “All hands to the launch bay,” Asami was indeed correct again in her assumptions. “And to whoever took the ‘L’ from the Motor Pool sign, ha ha we are all very amused” the old woman added as Asami meandered through one of the many workshops and to the large service elevator with plenty of other crew mates heading down; mostly men, stocky and grunt like. 

It was only when the elevator door slid shut and the whole cage juddered into a slow yet certain descent did the light-bulb finally strike in her head. Completely forgetting where she was and who was around her she let out a prideful yell. “Motor Poo! Ha!” She swore she heard one guy actually scoff and snigger at her apparent slowness. She never took implied humor well and this was a new low to her, causing the young yet certainly fair archaeologist to retreat directly into her shell like a turtle-duck. Hiroshi had once called her that; whenever she was unsure about a line of thought or some mathematical or physical equation he would put to her. She bemused herself, growing a short and shy smile as the elevator lowered into the large chasm that contained the submarine.

It was huge. Simply colossal and spanning the entire bay created in the Zhu Li. Varrick certainly hadn’t scrimped when it came to the equipment on this expedition and the sheer size and length of the marvel of technical engineering and design made the plucky scholar gawk as the elevator came to a sudden stop at the base of the shaft. 

Walking out she got the real sense of just how large the blue coloured sub really was. The large glass dome that was the command deck was the size of the front of Varrick’s mansion, with the trailing fish like body looking like three stacked trains together. It was truly marvelous and Asami was in awe of this monumental feat of engineering that would carry her dream to its location. 

In all of her stupefied gawking she was unfortunately not looking where she was going at all, or else she would have seen the person whom she bumped into. The other woman was trolling a large box stacked on top of another, high above her already gigantic height. She was at least a head taller than Asami and the young Sato was considered above average in height herself and while the archaeologist had bumped into her side something had fallen from the top most crate and laid at Asami’s foot. Picking it up she saw the bright redness of the tube; a short warning red coloured stick with a tail coming from the top. Asami guessed it was the top. It was a stick of dynamite in her hand.

The older woman was hardly impressed as she gently but certainly took the red explosive from Asami’s now trembling hand. With pursed lips and a deep, more masculine voice the woman addressed her in the ultimate of seriousness. 

“Hey kid. If you’re looking for the pony ride,” she pointed back to the elevator from where Asami came, “it’s back there” she pointed with a scrumped face, a tattoo on her forehead of a menacing third eye that Asami simply could not look away from. 

She’s the Demolitions Expert, Asami. Nice job.

She tried to brush off the poor introduction with a fake laughter, looking into the top crate as best she could to make out over two dozen more sticks of dynamite as well small spherical explosives and chains of smaller red sticks. 

“So, uh, what else have you got in there?” Asami eased out, not taking the demeanor or the look on the woman’s face as the ‘get lost’ she intended. The Expert rolled her eyes combined with a sigh, not wanting to humor Asami in any way. She had already cost her precious seconds and now they were turning into minutes the older woman simply did not want to spend with the less physically fit and more academic archaeologist. 

“Oh you know,” she began, sarcastic as ever. “Gunpowder, burning fuel. Notepads, fuses, glue - lots of glue, and paper clips.” She held up both hands on either sides of her face, a flat look of futility on it once she realised Asami was simply not getting her sarcastic air. “Big ones” she finished as flat as she started before taking hold of her trolley and wheeling her explosive haul onto the sub via the docking area, leaving Asami to wander about the deck and annoy somebody else. Anyone else would think she was just some tourist, or part of Varrick’s entourage that was staying behind for this voyage to return to Republic City. Yet however before Asami Sato could maneuver her way to find the old coot himself she bumped into yet another member of the expedition.

She was instantly startled yet again, feeling the thin layer of what was clothing on her covered back, expecting a collar but getting nothing. Turning around she made out black slicked back hair tied in a bun at the back of the woman’s hair; yes, another woman. 

“Um, excuse me?” she asked the woman, who had still not noticed she had been bumped into. She was seeing to something else in the distance nearby. “I need to report it?” Asami stated, more a question in her not knowing the technicalities of loading on the sub ready for departure.

The woman slowly turned, already as unimpressed as the demolitions expert with the third eye tattooed on her forehead, which Asami was still bewildered by seconds earlier. “Yes, Miss Sato?” Kuvira asked her, revealing her stark and flat face to the archaeologist. Asami practically jumped at the sight of her, the grease smeared over the bridge of Kuvira’s pointed and slim nose and the rest of the fumes creating a kind of film over her face, making her looks more emphasised and extremely attractive before the shy Sato. She had almost thought the same that night in Varrick’s mansion having had the mysterious mistress break into her apartment; she couldn’t help but see the seductive beauty in the slender and yet ripped build of Kuvira. 

Before Asami could say anything else on the matter Kuvira’s attention was stolen again, from behind with some hunched over little man with a beard taking up his entire jawline and chin. He was squatting in a crate as it was behind unloaded from a flatbed and it was filled with tins and smaller pallets of food stuffs. He really was an odd looking creature by Asami’s standard with a look of pure weirdness in his eyes that matched his rather wild style and demeanor. Kuvira looked to have no time for his complaints as he spoke; a thick and crusty voice that rubbed against the walls of Asami’s ears, making her want to be scarce and vomit again. She thought of the carrots and nearly did.

“Kuvira! I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” He yelled from his cove of ingredients, the crane unloading him finally stopping just eye level with Kuvira while the rest of the men and women on that section unloading the rest of the foods behind him for the trip. 

Kuvira rolled her eyes, motioning for Asami to stay where she was for a moment while she dealt with him. “What is it this time Bumi?” she asked quickly and plainly, filled with attitude.  
“You’ve gone and filled my wagon was all these non-essentials” he stated, sifting through all of the tins and packages stuffed in the pallets around him. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows so everyone could see his vast amount of arm hair ravaging him. He worse suspenders also, a very old fashioned outfit Asami thought and he even had this tiny bowler’s hat atop his head like a few at the museum before she left, however not as well kept and certainly not as expensive by her reckoning. She was almost disgusted by him and yet intrigued by him at the same time, much like she was with the demolition woman whom she had failed to get the name of. This man was certainly a Bumi type of guy. 

“I mean look at this right here,” he rummaged, “cinnamon, onion banana juice, cilantro. What the spirits is cilantro Kuvira?” He pulled out something green to her surprise. A ball that was fluffy and shriveled at the same time. Whatever it was he was instantly repulsed by it. “What the spirits is this?” He asked, stunned at the verdant vibrantness of it.

“That would be cabbage Bumi” Kuvira unveiled to him. 

Again he was stunned, blown away even. It was as if he had never seen such an item of sustenance before. He held it out in front of him as he freaked out, refusing to believe it even existed. “Cabbage? Cabbage?!” He yelled at the top of what Asami assumed were smoker’s lungs judging by the viscosity of his bile exiting his mouth and the rust in his vowels as he shrieked.

Kuvira took the cabbage from his stubby hands and tossed it about in one gloved hand; her hands were still gloved even know in the velvet that Asami liked the look of. “It’s a damn vegetable Bumi. The men need the four basic food groups” she explained, closing the space between he and the green on purpose to make him feel on edge like an addict suffering from withdrawal symptoms. It made Asami giggle a little like a minor. 

“I got yer four basic food groups” he countered, baking away from the cancerous cabbage. With his stubby fingers he counted to four proudly. “Beans, bacon, whiskey and lard” he finished. 

Before anything else could be said by anyone there was an even louder siren than before. The old woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker as Kuvira lobbed the cabbage back at Bumi and ordered to pack up and move away from the loading equipment and onto the sub with her. 

“Attention. All hands the launch bay. Final loading is now in progress.”

Walking along the line of the hull towards the main loading bay Asami made out finally a welcome familiar face; Mister Varrick in tow with another gentleman. He was huge. A tower of muscle and heavily built masculinity, the peak of physical conditioning. He was wearing an officer’s uniform with a buzz cut down to the follicles on his head with his beard and moustache completely erased. His chin was sharp, like a brick that could destroy anything else near enough and his hands could wrap themselves around anyone’s neck she thought. He could kill a man simply with his thumb she added to her mind. Still he looked charming enough. An authoritative look in his stature and yet an inviting one with his slick smile and brown eyes. 

“Asami-” Varrick called to her, seeing she was seeing his associate walking with him in the sudden and organised rush of the rest of the expeditionary crew. She made her way over to him, taking her inquisitive lookings from the beefcake standing next to him. Varrick was admiring his money’s worth by looking over every inch of the outer hull of the sub. 

“Mind blowing right!?” He boomed at her once she was standing next to him. The sound of his repeated yell rang in her ears as it had done the night in his basement study two weeks ago. He was still every bit as crazy and manic as ever. Her eyes followed his hand as it gestured towards the main body of the man beside him. “Asami Sato, I’d like you meet Commander Zaheer.”

Zaheer. A famous name to those in the correct circles, and Asami was. She knew his reputation for finding the seemingly impossibly found. She was amazed she didn’t feel it was he in the Air Temple photograph with Hiroshi holding the Fisherman’s Account. As the thought of the book entered her mind she suddenly thought of where she put it. Just as Zaheer extended his strong right hand to shake or kiss hers she felt her bag with both hands, feeling the book however leaving him with his hand out. Bad first impression there Sato. 

“He’s the head of the Temple Team that brought the book back” Varrick added. This time Asami corrected her mistake introduction by extending her hand out, which Zaheer took at her slender and rather petite fingers compared to his. He gave her his charming eyes and planted a soft kiss on her hand. 

“A pleasure to meet the daughter of old Hiroshi” were Zaheer’s first words; harsh and stained almost, like a varnish on a window frame of wood Asami thought. He was exactly how she had heard, charming at first, with his words not matching his demeanor nor his intentions no doubt. It wasn’t that he was shifty, no; the most shifty out of the bunch that she had met or that she had heard about what the geologist. Zaheer was much the same as Kuvira. Mysterious and very shrouded in the eyes like they had worked for some secret service before agreeing to expeditionary archaeology.

She pulled out the Account from her satchel, Zaheer locking his vision on it as soon as it showed itself from the stitching of the bag. “I see you have that book. Nice pictures” he remarked. Not that you could understand them. She couldn’t place her finger on it but she was still for some reason detained by him, or from him. She held the binding closely, as if to not let anyone else see in the buzz around them. Zaheer chuckled, oddly but yet again normally, not seeing the distrust Asami was sure was manifested in her eyes. “I prefer a good Earth fable myself” he finished before Varrick took the helm of the conversation again to Asami’s relief. She could certainly not see herself spending her time with Zaheer thus far. 

“Pretty impressive isn’t she kiddo?” Varrick asked, still admiring what his money had bought years ago. Up until now the thing must have been sitting in a dock somewhere around one of Varrick’s many lots. Asami could guess he had fingers in nearly every industry in Republic City and more. 

Asami was impressed to be fair, she had been the moment she stepped off the service elevator. She cleared her throat before addressing him, still not knowing just how to describe the majesty of the submarine nor the excitement that was now beginning to bubble inside her over the prospect of actually leaving and actually finding the Southern Water Tribe. “When you settle a bet Varrick, you settle a bet.” That was it. That was all she could say really. In the fraction of the second that she cleared her throat all sense of vocabulary and intellect left her and she was left as that six year old who had heard the tales of the Tribe from her father by the fire on one of his rare days off away from the office of Future Industries. The sweet, tender memory of it had followed her the two weeks, being her in flight movie while she slept in the single bunk room near the stern, struggling to sleep over the sound of the creaks and the spinning turbines to push the tugging ship closer south. Now it was zero hour.

As Varrick was about to say something else the alarm sounded again, catching Zaheer’s attention in an instant and leaving Asami flustered as she figured out what it meant. They were calling it and were about to descend. 

“Attention. Launch will commence in fifteen minutes” the old woman announced. 

Zaheer saluted to Varrick before making his way to the main loading bay doors, Asami guessing that was where she should go as well.

“Mister Varrick”

“Zaheer”

She tripped on the small rim, stumbling into the loading bay after Zaheer, Varrick waving to her as she ran. “Goodbye Varrick!” She yelled before the doors finally closed. She could hear the faintness of his farewell as the did.

“Make us proud kiddo!” He shouted just as the door shut. 

All at once the submarine sprang to life, everyone of the engineers, mechanics and crewmates reporting to their positions and pulling the various levers and switches to make her shipshape. Zaheer found Kuvira and the two took their positions in the glass dome that was the bridge at the bow, with Varrick overlooking the dive from the front. More levers and more switches went in all directions with every person performing some task or another except Asami, who had found a perch on the bridge to overlook the dive. Again she hadn’t seen the rest of the main team. Not the geologist nor the doctor nor the engineer who had she assumed, taken to their places in the sub during the final seconds of remaining above sea level. 

Once the fifteen minutes were up and the sub was fully ready Zaheer steered his sharp vision to the dock officer at the helm of the entire thing. “Lieutenant. Take her down” he stated in his deeper and more authoritative tones, making Asami more uneasy about him in the sternness of himself. The lieutenant muttered something to another crewmate who did the same until the order was relayed through the entire vessel that they were diving. Asami was more than nervous, hell she was terrified. She had never seen a sub let alone board one and now she was about to depart from the modern world for a place that no man or woman had seen for thousands of years. 

The entire thing rocked, jerked and thudded as the hooks and cranes holding it to the ship above failed, letting it go fully and into the water where the glass became engulfed by the abyss foot by foot. She was stupefied, seeing the impossible before her. They kept going until the whole chassis was gliding under the sea and away from the boat above. The next stop would hopefully be the Lost City of the Southern Water Tribe, just as the history books would have it written in the decades and centuries to come.

And before she knew it she was walking the contained and slightly claustrophobic corridor to her bunk, where she was remain for the rest of the midday until the next meal rolled around and this time she would certainly skip the carrots. After all in a sub there would be barely anywhere for them to go. 

She tossed her single duffel and her thick mariner’s coat to the side of the room, not caring where as long as they were away from her. With a final huff she leaped onto the bed, her rear landing first and then her head falling suddenly on the pillow provided for her. All in all the room was rather open, a welcome contrast to the corridors and the bed was more than satisfactory to her. She had never been fussy when it came to bedding; as long as she could sleep in it she was fine. 

Asami Sato closed her eyes, letting some time in for sleep after the rush of the morning and midday. To her surprise there was something else planned for her. A pair of eyes peeked from the upper bunk that had forgot to notice. Big eyes and perfectly rounded and young, certainly young; about the same age as her own. They were green too although a darker shade to her beautiful emerald and they were slitted, peered closely at her perfect skin. A handheld flashlight then joined the two eyes from the upper bunk. Whatever it was, they clicked the button and the bright yellow glow from the rather old flashlight flicked into existence shining directly on Asami’s eyes, causing them to open slowly and annoyingly. 

“What the hell?” She asked to the air, not knowing if she was in a dream and this was a mirage or if the eyes really existed; not that she could make them out exceptionally well behind the warm and piercing glow of the flashlight. 

In the most quiet of voices she heard a male voice address her. “You have disturbed the dirt” he stated like a rat, or mole or rodent of some kind. Of course she couldn’t make him out.

“What?”

“You have disturbed the dirt!” The creature shouted, falling from the top bunk an clicking the button of the flashlight again so that she make him out fully. She would, if during his fall she didn’t bang her head on the top bunk she now knew was there. Asami quickly moved from her lying space, scrambling to beside the man. He was shorter than she, but not by much and he was hunched over like the cook before. Dirt? 

He quickly scurried over to the bedding, whipping away the green coloured sheet to reveal what he meant; an array of piles of dirt, all different colours and each with a tiny flag to accompany it. “Dirt from around the globe spanning the centuries” he stated in a rather high voice, quickly like his attitude as he fiddled his fingers about in the thin air trying to think of some remedy to the situation. It appeared to Asami that when she had leaped onto the bed a dirt pile belonging to some place called Zaofu had merged with another from Ba Sing Se. It was around this time that the man noticed. He gasped rather violently, more like a wretch. “What have you done!” He whipped out a small trowel and a brush from seemingly nowhere, most probably his pocket. “Zaofu must never mix with Ba Sing Se!” 

“But what’s it doing in my bed you creep?!” Asami countered, wondering as much as he managed to separate the one big pile of dirt into two smaller piles of dirt with the flags falling flatly to the sides of each. 

He sneered at her. “You ask too many questions” he scurried back to her, standing up straight and getting rather close. “Who are you? Who sent you? Why are you so pretty?” He asked all three in rapid succession not letting her answer any before he brought out a pair of tweezers from his pocket too. Equally as quickly he managed to seize her ring finger and assaulted the nail with his tweezers, again for dirt. “Eh, I will know soon enough” he assured her as he picked a small piece of skin from under her nail. 

Practically flying across the room he reached a small microscope at the end table before she could even protest to the tweezers. All like clockwork he slammed the dirt in a slide and placed it perfectly under the lens and began observing the tiny molecules. 

“There you are. Tell me your story my little friend” he said, certainly not to her but to the microscope. It was as if he were looking further than the individual pieces of nothing and yet everything to the atomic level and then further again. “Number 2 pencil” he stated followed by a running train of thought. “Paint flecks, the type used in government buildings. Cat, Persian, born of a litter of three.” She joined him as he stared even deeper into the microscope. “These are all the microscopic fingerprints of an archaeologist and--” He took out the slide, licking it sweetly, “amateur linguist.”

Again she was stupefied. “But how the--”

“This is an outrage!” He yelled, flicking her bag to her followed by her coat and then he was thumping her to leave the room in a rush. “You must leave at once! Out, out, out, out, out!” 

They were stopped. Stopped by another woman, this time with greying hair that was a wavy bob, like an updo almost with a trail of waviness flowing on the right side of her head. She had a fair complexion with near enough the same emerald eyes as Asami. She was also taller than both she and the man. Her lips were where Asami’s vision went to, the slenderness of them and how they were like two simply flicks of pale across her mouth, followed by a rather sharp chin. She had her hand on her hip and cocked to the side with one eyebrow raised above the other while she stared at the spectacle before her. Seeing the stethoscope around her neck Asami knew instantly she was the doctor of the team, and that the man forcing her from the room must be the geologist. 

“Let me guess. Sad in the dirt didn’t you?” She asked sweetly and rather full of herself. The geologist left Asami immediately when the doctor’s green eyes turned to him, putting him in her crosshairs for blame. “Now Bolin. What did I tell you about playing nice with the other kids?” He charged at the woman and she smiled. She jumped into a crouch, Asami moving to the side of the doorframe as the doctor pulled out a bar of soap from her back pocket. Asami could see now why she was smiling.

“Get back, I’ve got soap and I’m not afraid to use it” she mocked, sticking out the pink brick to his face. He cowered from it, rather pathetically considering he was all for assaulting Asami before, now he was a hissing lizard next to a simple block of soap. 

He rushed back to the bunk, clambering for the ladder while the doctor tossed the block away now that she was done with it and grabbing a towel from the other side of the room, whipping at Bolin with it so he would retreat under his green sheets even faster and leave the doctor to talk with the archaeologist. “Back foul creature!” She yelled whilst laughing behind her lusty glee, enjoying every second of tormenting Bolin and looking stunning to Asami behind her. Her legs were certainly admirable; long and slender and toned too, the correct pair of legs that revealed to Asami that although the woman was a doctor, she was still physically fit, a welcome change from Bolin who was near enough just muscle in some places and then fat in others.

Once Bolin was hidden under his sheets and away from the doctor’s veil of mandatory hygiene and cleanliness she grabbed her medical bag from the doorway and set it on the table, brushing the wavy greying hair back into place and calming herself however still smiling that beautiful smile. 

“Name’s Beifong, Suyin Beifong, Doctor, Phd the works” she addressed herself as. An impressive amount of accolades to Asami, who was also a Phd. 

“Asami Sato, Phd as well” Sato introduced politely, taking Suyin’s equally lovely hand, much like her own in the way it was slender and poised as well. 

“You’re my three o’clock” Suyin told her, flicking the clasp of her bag and bringing out what appeared at first glance to be a hacksaw, long with teeth bearing at either Asami or Bolin from his sheets. “Beautiful isn’t she?” Suyin asked, although Asami hoped she didn’t need an answer. It was purely terrifying is what it was, estimated at over fifty teeth on it and sharp as anything the archaeologist had ever seen. “The catalog says this thing can cut through a femur in under twenty eight seconds. I’m hoping I can cut that time in half” she told Asami.

“Hoping?!”

Suyin next brought out a wooden stick, like one with a popsicle. Again assaulting the young woman she pressed it hard against her tongue. After less than a second the stick was put away and replaced by a slick thermometer, again finding it’s way into Asami’s mouth with Suyin’s guidance. “So where you from?” Suyin asked rather quickly. All Asami could do was mumble with the thermometer in her mouth while the doctor next examined her heart beat with the device around her neck. 

“Really? I have family up that way. Beautiful country there” Suyin told her, acting as if she could understand each precise syllable the mumbling signalled. Giving her patient a breath to relax she then returned the thermometer and the stethoscope to the bag and brought out two rather large beakers. How does all this fit in the bag anyway? Asami thought. 

“I’m going to need you to fill these up” Suyin told her with a smile. 

“With what?!” Asami shrieked again and just as Doctor Suyin Beifong was about to give her a very serious answer the older woman boomed over the loudspeaker again for the second time since they had departed the ship above. 

“Would Asami Sato, please report to the bridge?”


	4. Into the Abyss, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as Asami, Commander Zaheer and the rest of the team make headway towards the entrance to the South their journey becomes halted by an ancient guardian

The bridge was lit slightly darker than when they had initially submerged Asami thought, or at least it looked it. It was either the lighting or the fact that they were a few miles further underwater then earlier. She had never been under the blue so she could not be sure as she entered the glass dome containing the usual unusual suspects; Commander Zaheer standing at the bow as bold as brass in his military uniform buttoned to the top of the collar, Kuvira at his side with her thick and luscious black locks tied in a small tail with her own coat buttoned up to all but the top, keeping her renegade style in full swing as it had been since Asami first saw in her apartment and what Asami guessed to be the engineer and the demolitions expert. 

The former was a rather short girl, the daughter of Suyin, Asami remembered, with a short bob of rather straw like and loose black hair and lime green eyes that matched her mother’s beautifully. Her figure was rather simple too, a fairly full bust with a petite frame and yet amplified hips that drew the eyes a little from her cute face. If anything she looked like she’d be doing anything besides engineering although Asami thought those hips and that face in the overalls, gloves and dungarees made her, the cuteness of her. 

The Demolitions Expert beside her was familiar to Asami, having already met the stern looking dragon outside before launch. She stood the same, a turtleneck black sweater that looked like it came from the Northern Water Tribe to cover her torso with what looked to be a metal breastplate around the front of her. Whereas the engineer wore the dungarees and hat and overalls and shirt, the demolitions expert wore the sweater, breastplate and slacks to look absolutely menacing with the tattoo of the third eye on her forehead in a more prominent shade of red and flesh, as if it were a scar or a burn. 

“So I said to him,” the old woman one deck below was saying into her headset microphone. She was certainly elderly, with a bun of grey hair atop her head and a rather raggy blouse to cover her. The way she was sitting in her den was rather peculiar to Asami. How she was staring off into seemingly nothingness with absent eyes and almost trembling hands yet the arrogant posture and air that any ordinary person would have. If it weren’t for Asami noticing the the sheet of braille in her hands the archaeologist would never have figured the old woman behind the loudspeaker system throughout the ship and the sub was blind. What a team it was indeed. Thus far Asami Sato was accompanied by a man made of steel and his supporting woman of mystery, a borderline psychotic geologist, a doctor who was enthusiastic about people needing to be mutilated, an engineer who was questionably too young to be on the expedition with a broody demolitions expert and now a communication officer who was blind. 

“What’s wrong with my turtle-duck casserole?” The blind communication officer was saying to her contact on the other line. “And so he said to me,” she stopped, something buzzing in her ear like a bee’s nest, “Hold on Katara I got another call.” She quickly hit a button on her instruments and the channel flipped in her ear. 

“Sir, we’re approaching coordinates” she reported to Zaheer one deck above. He smiled devilishly looking to Kuvira to his side. 

“Alright let’s take a look around Gentlemen” he gestured to the men at the helm to flip on the spotlights afront the sub and scan the ocean floor and surrounding areas for what they were looking for. The way Asami had prepared it in her briefing before they submerged it was a crevasse of a sort, that would lead to a tunnel and then to the main chasm where they would disembark to the vehicles. Once on foot the way would become a series of winding turns and some digging to reach their destination. A trip that would in theory take another two weeks. 

The spotlights came to life and began to sweep around the floor of the abyss, showing those on the bridge just how many crews had tried to reach the City of the South before. The floor was littered with wrecks of old ships and vessels. Amazing.

It was at that moment, when Asami gasped at the sight, that Zaheer finally noticed her presence on the command deck. He turned like a flash to see her awkwardly meandering around the deck, twisting her wrists as she did when nothing took her grasp. She had her satchel over her shoulder and a pencil through her apparent mess of hair with the same single strand dangling in front of her right eye slightly, it added to her innocent sex appeal in a way that almost made her look vulnerable. But not to herself. In her own mind Asami Sato possessed very little sex appeal, remaining the child in her father’s study and then the budding young archaeologist while at university. She viewed herself as a tween still with big emerald eyes and the same slim, plain figure. 

The blind woman had skulked upward to the main observation deck of the bridge with her radio headset on and staring blankly away, however looking like she could see absolutely everything in the room. It perturbed Asami and fascinated her all at once with the way the woman was old and frail yet looking as if she had seen and been through more than anyone in history. 

“Hello Miss Sato,” Zaheer greeted her, shaking her hand firmly this time instead of charmingly attempting to kiss her hand; he still stirred something disgusted in her however, as if she was naturally repelling him and he was still attempting to move in on her. “Allow me to introduce the rest of the team” he started, ushering to the engineer first in the middle of the three gathered. “Opal Beifong, engineer and her mother I believe you met in your dorm.”

“Have you been spying on me Commander?” She had no idea why she said it, why it was a good idea to draw a line of salt between them instantly having only really just met him but she did. She disliked him infamously already and she couldn't help it. She liked Suyin despite her over enthusiasm for people getting injured and Bolin was funny already despite his terribly manners and personal hygiene. The cook, Bumi seemed funny too with his traditionally insane food regards and hell she even thought of Kuvira highly if only because she was stunning the night she broke into the apartment. Zaheer was simply vile compared. 

He ushered to the Demolitions Expert next while she chewed on a small stick with Opal blowing a large bubble from her gum. “Ms P’Li, best demo expert in the damn world, rescued her from a Fire Nation prison” he told, humouring P’Li who looked at Zaheer as if there was a little flame between them. Asami thought nothing of it as P’Li at first glance at least looked as if she would fillet the poor scholar alive before engaging her in conversation. Again not a huge improvement on what had already been established for the team. Asami was actually beginning to think she was in over her head. But again the realisation of the South was drawing closer and closer, causing her to build up inside

Finally Zaheer ushered towards the vacant and yet observant blind woman in the military beige blouse with the flattened collar that made her look out of place and out of time, a tiny hunch forming in her back. “Mrs Toph Beifong, Communications Officer” he explained. Suyin’s Mother and Opal’s grandmother. In her mind she already theorised and rationalised that it was a family business. She remembered Mister Varrick stating something about Opal once working with her father before the Air Temple expedition, and that her father was the engineer for that trip, now she was going solo, either due to an invalidity or death possibly. How morbid she thought indeed. 

Rather than shake anyone’s hand, on account of P’Li having such a wicked smile on her face that looked that she may even murder Asami in that instant, the plucky archaeologist simply nodded to everyone except Mrs Beifong, hardly like she could see her. 

Zaheer stepped forward slightly, gesturing for Asami to take to the blackboard already set up for her bombshell presentation of what they would do next to head to the city. “Now everybody,” Bolin and Suyin had entered the bridge, “I want you to give Miss Sato your undivided attention.” Asami stepped in front of the blackboard, a short stick of plain white chalk in her hand. 

“Good afternoon” she started awkwardly. Out of all the things in the world Asami Sato for sure despised any form of public speaking the worst, even in front of less that half a dozen of her so called teammates. Before she blurt out the next line of nothingness Opal popped another bright pink bubble from between her unamused lips while her grandmother simply returned to her station. “Wait!” she let herself yell, stopping Mrs Beifong and bursting the bubble gum. “How about a few pictures?” She asked rhetorically, sweating a little at the dismal crowd. She really did hate delivering presentations. 

She practically dove into her small satchel on the floor for the photographs she desired, rummaging through the camera she had brought as well as several notebooks and pens and scripture until at least she clutched the polaroids in her sleek redly tipped fingers. Standing back up again she was suddenly flustered, her sleeves beginning to fall from her elbows where she had rolled them up to work and her hair was becoming gradually more and more unkempt with more strands jumping from the collective ship. She fumbled the clutch of polaroids and quickly slapped one to the blackboard, thinking of what to say next. 

“Now the first picture, is a depiction of a creature so frightening, that sailors were said to be driven mad by the mere sight of it.”

The sudden rise and hush of laughter from the team behind her as she scribbled a few symbols from the Fisherman’s Account and some other sketchings of the creature she referred to made her stop. 

“Hubba hubba” P’Li remarked and that made Asami look towards the polaroid now stuck to the blackboard. Why me? Why public speaking? In her frenzy trying to find the picture of the creature that she took from the page in the Account she had hurried and pasted the polaroid of her at about fourteen in her full body swimsuit with floaties wrapped around her rather skinnier arms and a rubber ring around her petite waist in the shape of Nessie. She was mortified.

Come on Sato.

She chuckled to herself in a faux state of self confidence while she quickly sidestepped and yanked the polaroid from the blackboard, checking in her hand for the correct one and sticking it there in place. She then quickly completed her scribbled depiction of what appeared at first glance to be a lobster of sorts, with a smaller one continuing on from the head and a much larger tail, more resembling a scorpion. 

“Okay, so this is an illustration of something called The Leviathan,” she finally stated. Such a hideous title of legend was only becoming to what she and the Account had shown the team. It looked more menacing than anything Asami had certainly seen nevermind the rest of the team and she had only been studying the Fisherman’s Account for two weeks. Her years of research into every source on the Southern Water Tribe had never even turned up the name Leviathan let alone reveal an image even a sketch. The Account had mentioned that the South were hundreds if not thousands of years ahead in technology at the time of their demise but nothing of a creature so called guarding the gates to the region. Was it a machine possibly? Or something more? The questions that the scripture failed to answer had been flying around in Asami’s mind for two weeks and she hated not knowing. She prided herself on being informed on every detail of what she was letting in but ever since Kuvira had broken into her apartment she had been in the deep end with no life jacket and she couldn’t swim. It was almost suffocated but again the thought of finally seeing the legend of the city before her eyes, even if it were some hazardous ruin with broken pottery littered all around, would leave her accomplished truly for the first time in her life and the only time that would ever matter to her, truly. 

P’Li looked deep in thought at the image, seeing either the lobster or the scorpion resemblance and liking. She leaned to Opal’s side muttering, “With something like that I would have white wine, I think.” It made Opal giggle like a schoolgirl and even Asami chuckle slightly internally, covering her mouth with her red nails. 

She pulled the Fisherman’s Account from her satchel, surely this time and opened it to where she had bookmarked. It was the section regarding the creature itself. “You see,” she began again, perching her reading glasses on the tip of her nose. “It’s a mythical sea serpent and in the Account, the Fisherman describes it as such.

“Out of his mouth fly burning lights, like a flame on the blue. Sparks and white shoot out”

“But it’s more likely and much simply just a carving or a sculpture erected by the people millennia ago to ward explorers off” Asami finalised, folding the arms of her specs and tucking them into her small waistcoat that covered her blouse. Despite the nature of the expedition for she retained her higher class academic look; she had more suitable clothing for when they disembarked the sub. 

Everyone seemed to understand, Opal blowing another bubble of approval while Zaheer examined the sketches with intent. “So we simply find this masterpiece” he grunted in his more deeper tones as if ushering an order to the helmsman. 

Before anyone could ask another question Bolin popped up from seemingly nowhere, his hair unkempt and looking just a little deranged. “When do we dig?!” He exclaimed in a higher pitched voice than what Asami was expecting, crazy for the mention of dirt or sand or earth in any capacity. 

The truth was all the more crushing to him. “Actually we don’t have to dig at all.” Asami moved again, gripping the chalk and drawing an oval shape on the blackboard next to all her other scribbles. “According to the Account, the path to the city opens up at a tunnel at the bottom of the ocean, leading to an air pocket, very like a grease trap in a sink” she explained proudly, having finally conquered the nerves of public speaking. 

Kuvira leaned in to P’Li’s ear, a devilish smile across her beautiful face. “Archaeologist, Linguist, Mechanic, Plumber. It’s a wonder she’s still single” Kuvira hissed, however she was still looking Asami up and down, observing all the curves and contours that made up her slender and curvaceous figure. P’Li chuckled a little to herself, a manly laugh that would put Bolin certainly to shame. 

She swiftly brought her own lips to Kuvira’s ear, whispering a soft, “We all know you would Kuvira.” The mysterious woman simply gave P’Li a glance, smiling again. 

It was quickly taken away however with a gentle but apparent tug on the sleeve of her tightly fitting and alluring sweater. It was Bolin in his parka jacket that had come from the North just like all of their clothing, kneeling for some reason while he repeatedly tugged at her. Once she acknowledged him he finally looked up at her with big eyes looking as if he may cry. “You said there would be digging” he stated, in a way blaming her.

“Go away Bo” she dismissed in an instant.

As the rest of the team began to chatter amongst themselves Mrs Beifong almost silently returned to her station a deck below, Asami equally silently packing up her things from the presentation into her satchel, ready to return to her clean bunk and sleep finally. 

Mrs Beifong sat down, tuning her radio a little to instantly hear another, more louder buzzing noise coming from the outer hull microphones. Investigating further as Asami and Zaheer talked above deck the noise became more than buzzing, more like a churning, or indigestion coming from the middle of the ocean. She grumbled, lighting a cigarette and taking a rather long drag and listening closer to the noise coming into her ear. The fact that she could pull out a cigarette, light it and then continue to smoke it whilst blind was astonishing. “Commander” she muttered barely audible, more just waiting for him to pay attention to her on his own. She hardly cared. 

Asami was decoding some more of the transcript regarding the Leviathan while Zaheer was only pretending to listen. He was caught between Asami, Mrs Beifong and then the rest of the team so he hardly had good choices of conversation. Only on the third time Mrs Beifong murmured his name did he sling his head towards her direction. “What is it Mrs Beifong?” He asked in a half bothered tone, only answering to shut the old woman up as she smoked her cigarette. 

She kept her unamused, drained tone as she returned her instruments in tuning, still doing from memory or something. “There’s something on the hydrophone I think you should hear” she told him from her station, another puff of smoke following.

Zaheer walked to the balcony of his observation deck. “Put it on speaker.” They heard what she heard, the same churning and muffled groaning sounds that had come through to her own ears. The same pitch and pace and everything and it was fairly menacing, putting Kuvira mostly off guard but also Asami, she hardly wanted to be assaulted by an underwater creature.

Kuvira stepped closer to her commander, ready for something, anything. Zaheer was suddenly around outside to see if he could spot anything off. “What is it a pot of tiger-whales?” 

“Uh-uh, bigger” Mrs Beifong called up. The rest of the team, except Asami had wondered off to where they might be needed.

Kuvira moved down the steps to Mrs Beifong’s deck, taking a spare headset and listening herself. She quickly took command of the radio deck, tuning it to as she saw fit with a determined and frustrated look on her face. “It sound metallic, could be we simply hit a small rock” she was rationalising. Asami detected a little fear more than precuasion, like Kuvira was actually scared of what may becoming. 

Mrs Beifong simply grunted at her. “You wanna do my job?” She asked almost incredulously, taking the least drag of her pathetic cigarette then immediately lighting another. “Be my guest.”

“Is it just me or is it getting louder?” Asami asked the room, again instinctively, even if it was a fairly poor time to start acting smart. If it wasn’t a pot of tiger-whales, and there certainly wasn’t another creature of that size living with all the debris of the ocean floor. Suddenly there was a growing sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach again, as if someone had secretly fed her carrots without her knowledge. That usually meant something bad.

Yet just as fast as it had come over the loudspeaker system it was gone suddenly, fading out as if the source was getting further and further behind the sub as it drifted through the deep. Kuvira let out a quick sigh of relief and straightened up, looking to Zaheer above deck. “Whatever it was. It’s gone now Commander” she informed him, taking one hell of an assumption in Asami’s eyes. 

Zaheer smiled slightly, turning to the helmsman. “Helmsman,” he shouted and the old man turning to acknowledge. “Bring us about and tighten--”

They were suddenly all tossed about like ragdolls, Zaheer flying across the bridge towards the rear with Kuvira flying with him, landing in his grasp to save her. Mrs Beifong was held steady in her chair yet still jerked enough for whiplash to follow bruises that would form later. The Helmsman was killed on impact and a few more ensigns piled up together near the wheel. No one had any idea what had come out of nowhere to hit them but when Asami landed precariously on the cracked glass of the dome she stared at it in the eye. Jimminy Christmas. It was glowing, purely glowing with a dark and yellow hue that emanated from it’s, what she thought, face. It was certainly shaped like a lobster too and from the etherealness and transparent nature it simply had to be what she deduced in seconds. 

“It’s a damn Spirit!”


	5. Into the Abyss, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the disturbance in the waters the team and the submarine must fend off the lethal Leviathan until the crew can get the equipment and personnel onto the away transports and escape the beast

Opal leapt from her station the moment the emergency lighting kicked in and the alert siren began blasting in her ear from the impact. Half of her engineering team were on the floor, some with head injuries and others with just a faint dizziness from begin lobed about the compartment. They were littering the small corridor now, in her way as she charged ahead in her dungarees that were a little too big for her legs and the gloves that looked and acted like medieval gauntlet on her rather small hands. “Out of the way!” She yelled at the top of her lungs to be heard over the continuous lapping of the emergency siren. A few moved but not many. She eventually made it through the corridor and into a large section of the engineering compartment with a few smaller boilers and other systems, dials and such littering what she could see of the walls. 

To her dismay the room was on a tilt, gravity pulling at her from the side wall almost with the men and women working in the room on their bellies on the floor or nursing more injuries to the sides; it was a colossal crash from whatever they hit. What made the situation truly bad was the oncoming wave of gradual water seeping in from an unknown source or multiple. The Sub was taking it on by the bucket load with each passing second. She bit her lip before shaking her bob of hair and moving onto the next section of the compartment. She needed to contact the bridge as soon as she could. 

Zaheer and Kuvira come to their senses faster than Asami did, the mysterious woman sucking up the blood from her bottom lip and Zaheer driving back an oncoming headache with simply his iron will. The rest of the bridge crew stumbled in standing positions too, moving to their stations once more while Asami moved back onto the deck while staring the creature in the eye the entire time. A Spirit? Impossible. But it was hardly impossible when the colossal beast outside was staring at her back. In truth she could hardly believe she was so preoccupied or otherwise to not think the Leviathan could be a spirit after all. It made perfect sense in theory but to get there one had to believe the spirits were real and inhabited the world to begin with. 

She rubbed the back of her head, the swelling no doubt around the back making her mildly dizzy while she turned around to face the commander and his lieutenant.

“Tell Bumi to melt the butter and bring out the bibs,” he ordered Kuvira, something meaning something else that they had built up on years of serving together. It was now that Asami knew for sure some if not all of them had military experience. If she had to make an educated guess she put Zaheer with the Earth Government, high up for a few years and probably decorated at least a little. Bumi would be a United Republic man with his slack jaw and common tongue while P’Li and probably Kuvira suited the Fire Nations but she could not be sure with the tumour sized swell building up in her head. “I want this lobster served up on a silver platter” Zaheer completed, Kuvira nodding and moving to a telephone line close by. Again Sato rubbed her head, the room beginning to spin in a diluted maelstrom.

Kuvira eyed up the closest batch of crewmen. “Load the torpedo bays, subpod crews to battle stations!” She yelled quickly to the men to tell to the rest of the fighter crews around the sub rapidly in her manly voice before shaking yet again as the Leviathan tightened it’s grip on the sub. 

All over the submarine crews of two rallied to their checkpoints before proceeding to the smaller hangar bays for smaller, two manned submarines with excellent maneuverability and attacking tools, missiles and small torpedoes mostly accompanied by small machine guns tipped with specialist ammunition for deep sea combat. Like clockwork they leapt into seating, a pilot and gunner in each subpod with Zaheer over the scrambling intercom. “Steady boys. Don’t panic” he consoled them through his smaller radio from the bridge. P’Li even took to a subpod, piling in with Bolin, losing his puffy parka coat and getting comfortable in just a pleated tank top, a single curvy strand of matte black hair coming from the combed back clump. He may have looked hunched over and unkempt when dealing with Asami but now he was a roughly unshaven yet beefed up rogue with an itch to do some damage to their attacker. His copilot remained in her black turtleneck and her breastplate, strapping in quickly and firmly and then taking to the controls while Bolin would stick with the weapons systems. 

Once all of the subpod crews reported battle ready status and another large shake throughout the sub Zaheer pointed at the deck officer while Kuvira propped up Asami to a desk with a damp cloth to the back of her head, the swelling intensifying. “Launch the sub pods!” the commander ordered at the top of his lungs in urgency. 

The full wing of tiny pods flurried from the launch bays scattered throughout the sub. Fourteen in all with jets of bubbling bribe shooting from behind them from the quad-rotors. They hardly looked like they could fight or even operate with the shape of them, simple and like the tips of conventional ballistics. With a synchronised twirl and flip they were then hurtling towards the Leviathan at full speed with all the gunners setting their crosshairs on the face of the spectral beast. There was no way to know if their warheads would deal any damage at all to the beast but they fired anyway; Bolin calling for action and launching the first torpedo himself towards it.

With a full barrage taken to the face of the spirit the mighty beast took his sights from the submarine and looked to the wave of smaller, pesky fighters. He released the submarine and diverted his attacks to them, swatting two from their flow with a whips of his colossal secondary claws. The sketch Asami had shown on the command deck had been correct in assuming the beast was lobster resembling in the front with the rear of a scorpion but the sheer size of the creature was much out of proportion. It was a smaller lobster looking beast in the front, with the head and small spinal column coming out of a much larger body. Instead of just one set of claws the huge spectre had two, a moderately sized set in front large enough to have gripped the sub and a huge set in the back where the scorpion resembling body began. It was truly an abomination of a spirit. 

The submarine jerked, relieved to be free of the Leviathan’s grip. With a click of his neck Zaheer turned to the helmsman. “We’re free, all ahead full” he ordered short and snappy, to be free and clear of the thing in case it decided to seize them again with his mighty claws. As the sub maneuvered slowly to the side, away from the Leviathan’s eyes and claws the rest of the sub pods continued to engage the beast, firing smaller missiles and firing the specially tipped ammunition from the machine gun mounted at the bottom of their bows.

The spirit began to jerk and flail about erratically, snapping both sets of claws left and right and exerting a stream of red and black energy from his wicked jaws, completely shredding through the chassis of sub pod after sub pod, exterminating another five of the twelve remaining combatants while they launched more counterattacks in a vain effort to destroy the beast.

Seeing the damage being wrought outside of the dome Zaheer turned to his weapons correspondents, Kuvira still tending to Asami with her fading vision. “Fire torpedoes!” Zaheer yelled across the bridge while another sub pod detonated outside in a flurry of bright white and blue explosion mixed with the evil crimson energy from the Leviathan. The scattered main batteries atop the submarine turned steadily, the men inside turning their wheels arduously to aim the outdated things. One by one they launched another barrage of torpedoes from the mothership, larger and much more deadly then the smaller explosives from the sub pods peppering the monster with no effect. Collisions exploded all over the black, blue and yellow Leviathan and again to no effect, much to Zaheer’s determination to bring the beast back as a trophy. However with the barrage from the sub the beast took notice, spotting their position and launching a precise beam of black red energy towards the hull, right at the middle and tearing right through like a nail through paper.

The corridor Opal was currently in popped like a cork, something somewhere detonating and causing all of the bolts in the bulkheads to pop out like a machine gun firing relentlessly upon her. She took one to the arm instantly, surging straight through the skin and out the other side, blood oozing from the wound and making her wince. It was time she moved. She ran quickly from her position, through the barrage of the rest of the bolts as the corridor collapsed around her. She reached a ladder quickly and with her breath leaving her fleetingly as she climbed with her one good arm; the pain burning up to her should like a hot poker was being pierced through her bicep. 

Two men helped her up once she reached their hands, pulling her from the corridor and closing the vertical hatch after her to seal in the water that was bound to ensue the flurry of flying bolts. “Get me the bridge!” She called to another engineer once she got to her feet again. A fourth crewmate offered her a bandage but she refused in her hurry to report. 

“Sir, it’s engineering on four” Mrs Beifong called to Zaheer from her station, another cigarette in her hand no doubt nearly finished and looking as if nothing was wrong, then again she could hardly see it to begin with.

Zaheer switched his radio to channel four, hearing the whirling siren and chaos going down in engineering. “Zaheer!” It was Opal already with the hot tip of pain on the tip of her tongue as she frantically talked. The volume of her shout nearly deafened him. “We took a big hit down here and we’re taking on water fast,” she reported, more running and some mild screaming in the background as she begged the open air for oxygen. “I wouldn’t want to be around when it hits the boilers” she finished sarcastically. 

Asami was finally beginning to come to her full senses when Kuvira left her for Zaheer’s side to hear the other end of his conversation. Asami’s satchel was littered all over the deck with her papers scattered and her solid equipment in tatters. still she maintained her sturdy grip over the Fisherman’s Account, not letting it go for even Armageddon. 

“How much time do we have?” Zaheer asked down his end, almost biting his lip as he finished. 

“Twenty minutes if the bulkheads hold.” Zaheer and Kuvira heard another, more larger bang from Opal’s line, meaning no doubt that the very bulkheads had failed to hold and had collapsed on themselves. Asami swore she heard both Zaheer and Kuvira curse the same vulgar syllables as they heard the bang echo. “Better make that five.” Such a rapid reduction of time in what was less than five seconds. They had launched merely hours ago and now the sub would explode in a spectacular flurry of the pale blue chassis. Good thing Varrick was a millionaire. 

The commander moved back to face his crew, Asami daring to stand on her feet with the book in one hand and a cloth in the other pressed up against her injured head. 

“You heard the lady, let’s move” he instructed the crew, again quickly.

Asami was caught like a fish out of water, nowhere to go that she knew. She was gawking again as the men rushed past her to somewhere she didn’t know yet again. “Where? Move where?” She asked anyone and no one incredulously. Zaheer rolled his eyes and took her arm quickly, hoisting her still frail body on his back and carrying her to the evacuation trucks. Kuvira stayed on the deck a moment longer.

She was attempting to grab Mrs Beifong’s attention. She was on the telephone again. “Beifong sound the alarm and get to an escape pod!” She called out to the deck below.

“He took a suitcase?” She was saying over the line, taking a brief drag of her almost completed cigarette. “Katara honey, I don’t think he’s coming back” she continued, in no way paying attention to Kuvira or anything else transpiring in the now empty bridge.

“Beifong!” 

She took the least, short puff of cancerous smoke from her pathetic cigarette and then blew out the solution. “I have to call you back” she said down the line in a rather croaky voice, more hazardous than before due to the smoke travelling down her throat. “No, no honey, I’ll call you” she finished her call and stubbed the butt of her cigarette on the table before switching the channel of her radio device and triggering the command sub wide.

“All hands, abandon ship.” The line was cold and final and almost all without hope in the hectic and relentless attack of the monstrous Leviathan. With Asami hoisted on his back and Kuvira, Bumi and Mrs Beifong soon catching up behind him, Zaheer trudged through the gradually emptying corridors of the sub, through chaotic compartments of scrambling crewmates and slowly flooding corridors towards the bay of larger more stable submarine pods, like a lorry equivalent. Kuvira moved ahead with a large series of lunges until she reached the hatch; Suyin and Opal waiting inside for them already. 

She grabbed the hatch ready with her strong arm, making sure that the path was clear for Zaheer to leap in almost and slam the Phd in her seat with the Doctor an Engineer. “Move it people, sometime today would be nice!” Kuvira yelled to the rest as Zaheer dropped in and basically flung Asami into the nearest empty seat. Despite the fact that she was drifting between an injury sleep and mild consciousness she clutched the book close to her breast, not daring to let it leave her orbit. It would be their least hope she thought of finding the way to the South. She tied her harness quickly, tucking the book into her waistcoat and folding her arms around it so it could in no way leave her, like a small child. Zaheer and Kuvira flew into the pilot and copilot’s seats in seconds with Kuvira flipping switches and pulling levers and dials to get the sub ready for launch from the main sub’s rear launch bay with the rest of them; a total of ten in all ready to launch as soon as Kuvira hit the main release lever in her pod. 

She was pushing and pushing with both arms and all of her strength as Zaheer sat their modifying the rest of the sub for launch but the lever failed to flip. “Lieutenant!” He yelled hard and coarse at her ineffectiveness. If Zaheer had an intolerance for anything, as Asami was noticing around him, it was for futile ineffectiveness at times where he needed action. It was hardly misogynistic, simply demanding and the way he operated with an iron fist, and plus, they were about to explode and the expedition with them. 

“I’m working on it!” Kuvira yelled back, equal in her bile and spite for the grumpy commander with the square chin. She was trying her best.

Outside with the last seven sub pods desperately fleeing the Leviathan’s still flailing claws and energy bursts the beast diverted its attention towards the main sub, which was aimlessly floating through the deep to somewhere else, no one at the helm. With another puff of his immense strength the Leviathan launched a final blast of blood red energy towards the hull, ripping right through it, the main boilers and then out the other side again. 

In the final moment Kuvira kicked the lever hard with her right booted foot, almost breaking the thing completely. The rear bay doors exploded open and the seven transport subs flew out at desperate speeds. They kept tight, not too much to worry about room butt enough as to not be blasted from existence by a snap of the Leviathan’s mighty claws. A second after they cleared the sub’s orbit it detonated in three places in a flurry of fizzy blue and white in the middle of the abyss where it would join the wrecks of countless ships that attempted the journey before them. In the shroud the explosion had caused the Leviathan showed his eyes again, then his claws and zoomed through, chasing the fleeing crewmates wherever they may fly. He snapped at another sub pod, then a transport and with another blast of his energy he eviscerated another in seconds. 

Zaheer turned back to Asami and the rest of the team getting rattled in the back. Suyin was wrapping a bandage hastily around her daughter’s arm where the bolt had pierced right through. Again Opal winced and pulled a face. “Where to Miss Sato?” the commander asked more calm and retained than in the sub. Remarkable too considering there was a huge spectral guardian with practically a laser chasing them, hell bent on killing each and every single one of them left. 

She scoured the pages of the Fisherman’s Account, searching frantically for a section on the gateway to the path. She knew where it was, she had perused the very four page sequence that told of their predicament and now all of the symbols and glyphs just burred and became gibberish again. Sato. Focus or we’ll all die. Death. Rotating in her head while the time in the metal box seemed to slow down. She remembered the words, slowly in her mind and carefully, as to not mistranslate a single letter or syllable. Crevasse. 

She opened her eyes. “We’re looking for a crevasse of some kind” she yelled to the front, keeping the book opened but close by, not knowing if she’d need it again. The image of the grease trap came straight to mind and how if she thought the carrots hours earlier were bad, this would completely empty her stomach. 

Ahead was the very crevasse, a short little slit to the naked eye but one that would lead to a tunnel, the grease trap and then onto the air pocket, and hopefully safety. Zaheer pointed ahead to the location and pulled the radio microphone to his almost non-existent lips. “All craft make your mark twenty degrees down angle” he ordered the remaining transports and sub pods. 

P’Li and Bolin maneuvers their craft and formed up alongside the rest of the main team, the rest flailing and soaring about in all directions to dodge and weave away from the onslaught that the Leviathan was still frenzied to release upon them, as if he were growing tired and frustrated that they were not dying. He snapped his claws a killed another pair in a subpod. “I’m right behind you!” Bolin yelled over the radio to Zaheer. 

They hit the crevasse in seconds, the beast pursuing them the entire way with blasts from his mouth and snapping at his claws becoming more annoyed at the in tact submarines. He ploughed through the crevasse opening, refusing to allow it to stop him from killing them. In his killing fury he gripped up another sub pod, destroying it and the men inside. The following blast from his jaws hit the stabilisers of a transport, causing it to swerve out of control in front of Kuvira and Zaheer in the cockpit of their own. Now it was on to the grease trap and Asami was growing more and more nervous, hoping the cavern leading up hadn’t collapsed already. 

She clenched the book tightly to her chest, almost stopping the airflow and compressing her upper bust. “It’s just like a grease trap, like a sink” she muttered, freaking out and closing her eyes yet again. The spectacles on the bridge of her nose were almost leaping from her face again while she was looking like she was about to blow a gasket. “It’s like a grease trap like a sink!” She exclaimed at the top of her lungs. 

Kuvira peddled the levers up and down with the steering wheel staying straight and true in her gloved hands. She was close to freaking out too once she saw the narrowness of the true tunnel; all the while the Leviathan threw blast after blast down the tunnel after them, being caught in the crevasse himself. Some rebounded off of the rocks to hit more, causing insufferable damage and breaking the tunnel apart behind them. P’Li struggled to keep her sub pod steady under the pressure and the transports behind her, trying to steady her hands to no avail as the blasts of red shot past her cockpit window. She jerked the wheel, forcing the pod right into the back rotor of the commanding transport sub. A rather large and worrisome crack formed instantly as the surface of the blue came into view. The air pocket. It existed after all. 

They surfaced finally, five remaining transports and more or less in sub pods. A crew of about four hundred reduced to almost a quarter in several minutes. Kuvira and Zaheer both let out huge sighs of relief, the latter almost slamming his bear like hand on Kuvira’s shoulder. “That was some damn nice driving there Kuvira.” 

It was the first time Asami ever truly saw her smile. A genuine smile that looked like it came from her heart. Thanks to her there was hope yet of finding the city, and thanks to her, at least one hundred crewmates drew breath. “Don’t mention it Sir.”

An hour later they were all standing at the shore. The transports and sub pods lay to the sides abandoned; everyone was gathered together with a fleet of specialist vehicles ready to move out. It was a humble and solitary oasis, like a bathing pool for absolutely no one with a large doorway open to the road to the South behind it. Asami found it comforting. Serene and collected as she stood with the book in both hands by her thighs. Suyin had lit a candle and was setting it in the pool contained in one of the infantry’s helmets So much death she thought, for a single chance to see a sight that hadn’t been seen in thousands of years. Was her childhood dream really worth three hundred or more lives? Not remotely. Was it worth her own? Almost certainly to her at least. Having set the candle representing three hundred souls on it’s course to remain in the middle of the pool for all eternity Suyin returned to the mourning mass. 

Zaheer stepped forwards, his ranger hat in his hands at his thighs. “Seven hours ago, we started this expedition, with almost four hundred of the bravest men and women I’ve ever known. Earth Government, Fire Nations, Water Tribe and even from the United Republic,” he raised his hands to display the hundred remaining souls behind him. “We’re all that’s left,” he said, glumly as if there was no hope of coming back alive. “I won’t sugar coat it people, we have a crisis on our hands.

“But we’ve been up this neck of the woods before and we’ve always come through,” he contradicted, sparking individual flames of courage and such in each and all of them. But not Asami, she was too busy seeing the blood she had bathed her hands in already. The way she saw it, it was her fault. She thought the Leviathan was nothing more than a simple carving or a statue and she was wrong. So wrong. Now it was doubtful if the rest of them would even reach the City. 

Suyin, from nowhere, placed her slender finger along Asami’s shoulder. She whispered in her ear in her sweet tone of understanding. “They all signed on because they knew this could be a one way trip. Because finding the South is a belief, not an expedition.” Asami couldn’t help her eyes gradually open, a small smile forming but when she looked to find Suyin, the doctor was gone. 

“From here on in, everyone pulls double duty,” Zaheer was saying, doing what he did best, which was rally and delegate and rally again. Despite his brash and gruff demeanor and hard exterior Asami couldn’t help but think he was a true leader, a good leader and the leader the people needed if they wanted the goal as much as she did still. “Everyone drives, everyone works.” He was walking up the steps to where the vehicles were rallied. He turned to Asami at the back, his expression almost dire.

“Looks like all our chances for survival rest with you Miss Sato, you and that little book.” So no pressure then. She looked almost scared of the thought that she was. 

Mrs Beifong took another least drag, tossing the cigarette away like a bad penny. “We’re all gonna die” she stated flatly. Zaheer yelled at people to ready up, to take to the vehicles before he himself did the same, leaving Kuvira to complete the delegation and be on with it. 

“Bolin you’re in point.” He took to the massive digger near the front. “No P’Li, Opal’s taking the oiler, you know the rules I want you behind that thing at all times. Beifong, put that damn cigarette out.” Asami was already near a truck, the small manual horn taking her curiosity. She’d never really had a car to call her own back home and the fat that there was a random truck just littered in the open area, and the horn was slightly funny allowing her mood to pick up. 

The commander soon found her playing with the horn and wasting time. He gritted his teeth while he walked over, the rest of the hundred people getting on with work and mounting up to move onto the path. The next time she pressed the rubber ball of the horn Zaheer gripped the full horn, ripping it from its shackle and tossing it to the ground. 

“Are you checked out on this class of vehicle?” She stared at him blankly. “Can you drive a truck?” He asked again, more irritatedly and feeling the blood boil in his skin. This was a slight waste of his time. She shrugged casually, prepared to school him on her extensive knowledge of vehicles. 

“Of course I can drive a truck.” Two minutes later he was stroking his palm rather violently down his face as she pulled off and drove in perfect formation. A better driver than most men.


	6. The Road to the South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the submarine destroyed, most of the crew dead and the deadly Leviathan still lingering at the entrance way to the gates, Zaheer puts his people on double duty to push forward with their journey

They had been travelling for almost two weeks; a sickly mixture of driving, walking and sitting with Asami taking it upon herself to lead the way for the rest of the team for most of it. It had only been recently that she had grown tired of sitting alone in the skeletal truck and piled in with Zaheer and Kuvira to direct the convoy through the tunnel that seemed to never end. The levels were fluctuating, the light scare and the conditions varying for every one of the fourteen days since the Leviathan had ripped through the magnificent submarine and three hundred brave men and women. After that Miss Sato refused to let anyone else fall while she held the book, and key, that would see them through to the city and her dreams fulfilled. Gone were the days of wearing the tightly fitted, crimson hinted blouse and the containing little waistcoat with her sleeves rolled up like she was still in her basement dungeon of the museum. Gone were the days where she could let her hair down majestically or tying it up only loosely, allowing to either escape and threaten to flood down again like a redly coloured souffle. She had now gone for the woolen jumper, much like the rest of them, over a raggy shirt and prudent vest or tank top with the baggy yet insulated slacks. It was beginning to get much colder with each passing day.

The first of the fourteen days underground was simply getting further away from the gateway. The large gateway that contained a whole other world on the other side. From the patterns and such along the walls for miles of winding and improvised driveways Asami could tell with mild correlation with the Fisherman’s Account that they were beginning to enter what had been the outskirts of the Southern Water Tribe. The blue hue contained in the hallowed walls was beautiful, reflecting and jumping away whenever light from the headlights of the convoy would shoot out at it. Bolin had on several occasions wanted, asked, demanded he take samples of the walls to return to the surface with. On the least of his requests Kuvira had become so annoyed she recalled that his entire collection that had been sitting on Asami’s bed would be either ash or less on the ocean floor from when the unearthly spirit beast shredded through what remained of the submarine. He tossed himself to the floor and burst out in a faux spat of crying until P’Li gave him a good slap across the back of his rather large head to make him stop. 

It was one of the perks of travelling with a primary team made up of mostly women, Asami would find herself thinking most nights when she was either eating or not alone, sifting through the pages of the Account. Once she reached the end of it she simply started again from the beginning, skip the stage they had already passed through, spend more hours on the section they were at and then continue; she had already repeated the process thrice in the fourteen days. It was strange really, so many women in key roles, Suyin arguably holding the most important on the team behind Zaheer and Asami herself. And she had been so nice to Asami too, stopping to her help her up a ledge when the rest of them, even Opal would have and did leave her to traverse it herself. There were many a times when the aged and caring doctor Suyin Beifong had come over in the middle of their night to check on the young archaeologist, forcing her to put the book down and go to sleep. 

There was one night, one of the most recent when Asami simply refused to put down the Account, fixated on the page just before the Fisherman described the architecture and aesthetic of the city. She was transfixed on it, the way the road led to a hallway shining in blue and white just before a huge and almost blinding light would break as one would come out of the tunnel to see the city alone and solitary on an island in the middle of a lake of the purest water imaginable. It was just like the way she had imagined it, just like the way her father had told her. 

Suyin found her with a tear running down her face, two mugs of some of the least of the tea in her hands, steaming and smelling like pure bliss. “You look like you could use a mug,” the doctor told her, face full of compassion and a small and tender smile to boot, “Doctor’s recommendation” she finished, laughing a little with closed eyes. 

She pulled up a spare crate and sat down, handing the mug in her left hand to Asami, who in turn slouched a little in more complex chair, taking the glasses from her nose and folding them inside her jumper pocket. Before she drank she dragged over her blanket, a thick and amalgamated thing make from several others she had owned and worn to death. It was one of the only things she had brought on the trip out of comfortable habit and less out of practicality and rescuing it from the sub had been a moment that may have made her heart skip a bit. She took a long sip of the tea, warm and soothing in her mouth and the way down, forcing to her to release a content and rather loud sigh as she melted into the chair with the warm blanket surrounding her. Suyin giggled a little again, taking a stout sip of her own, no sighs or show of pleasure just a quenched thirst. 

“What is that?” Asami asked, the tiredness being held back by the imagery of the corridor before the city melting by the tea and starting to show in her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever had tea like this before.” She took another sip, forcing another sight from her. 

Suyin set hers on the crudely made desk from two small barrels and a large plank of wood. “I grew up for a while around my mother’s friends” she began to tell, remembering some good memories of family that Asami never had. “One friend, Zuko, had this uncle who made the best tea in the whole world. I learned a couple things back then.”

“You sound like a fairly contained teen Suyin” Asami remarked, taking another sip before completely retreating into the blanket, leaving only her head and half her neck above, the cold coming in from the rocky walls. It was severely cold some nights underground, closer to the center of the world but so much closer to the South Pole it was still one of the coldest places Asami had ever been, and she had taken many trips to the North and such. 

Laughter escaped Suyin, loud and very feminine, almost upper class and noble in tone and pitch as if it were fake only her facial expression told the Phd that the Doctor was genuinely amused by her assumption. She had to take another drink just to silence her chuckle. 

“I was probably the most rebellious teenager you would have met and my mother will attest to that” she said, slightly choking on her tea having forced it down her throat too fast before talking again. It made Asami laugh too, her sweet mouth convulsing and her eyes fluttering in their tiredness. Again she wondered if it would be the same if the group was filled with mostly men, although P’Li to her was neither or, she simply existed, existed rather madly and did her job, sex or gender to contribute to P’Li. 

Still Suyin silenced herself in her sudden hushed bout of coughing from the tea going down wrong. She could see Asami was beyond tired. Finishing her tea she glanced at the other mug, empty too and thus she took both handles in one hand and leaned over to the small oil lamp, turning it down all the way to allow it to extinguish itself.

“Night Sato” Suyin remarked before returning to the main camp where Asami hardly ever ventured, allowing her to sleep. 

Asami countered Suyin’s farewell with her own and made herself extremely comfortable in the chair with the blanket, pulling her pillow from the duffel underneath and drifting off before the lamp had even died on the desk. 

The doctor was her favourite by far, she was the only person in the team who would spare a second word to the archaeologist when she made herself present. Mrs Beifong simply hardly talked to anyone and Opal kept to P’Li and Bolin, whenever he injected with some utterly disgusting comment or behaviour, as was his custom.He was strange creature and yet he was more welcome with the rest of them than Asami was. She knew it was the bond of comradery yet that hardly made her feel any less of an outsider. 

One encounter had made her completely ruined by P’Li and Bolin; it left her feeling more of an idiot that when she was giving her presentation on the submarine. 

She was aimlessly walking about the vehicle convoy one afternoon while the crew stopped and checked over all of the rigs and machines, P’Li looking for one of her many explosive devices to remove a small obstacle in their pathway. There lay a small circular canteen on the explosives truck just sitting there while Asami remained thirsty, not wanting to disturb anyone for some water of her own. 

In one quick chug she absorbed the entire contents of the canteen, the taste feeling a tad off, like a single drop of contaminant had fallen in while someone was filling it. She closed the lid and placed it carefully back on the truck when P’Li came over with a detonator box in her hand.

“You didn’t just drink that did you?” She asked incredulously, more like as if Asami had murdered someone before her eyes and placed the body not some simple canteen on the back of the truck. Nervously Asami shook her head slowly, P’Li shaking hers rather fast as she did. 

“That’s not good,” she said, still shaking her head, the long pony tail at the back shaking as she did and even the third eye popping with the other two. “That’s nitroglycerin!” She exclaimed. 

You genius Sato. You damn genius. 

She held her breath, beginning to panic internally at the thought of whatever nitroglycerin was worming its way down her throat and into her stomach where it would react with the acid and most surely murder her the way P’Li was reacting to it. She held her throat, hoping to stop the process. 

P’Li looked a little calmer now, the hint of a smile behind her smokey eyes. “Don’t move and don’t breathe. Don’t do anything except pray” she was telling Asami whilst slowly dragging her feet away from under her, as if beginning to walk away or something. Still Asami held her throat and breath, refusing to die to a simple mistake such as drinking something bad. It couldn’t be so bad surely? Although there was that slightly peppery taste on the tip of her tongue remaining. No, no not now. It was fine. She was fine. It was completely fine. 

There was a sound from behind her. A large crescendo of noise that scared her to death practically, making her jump in the air and then out of her skin. Once she landed she found the shape and size of the source of the bang. A smaller thing with slicked back hair and a five o’clock shadow in a silly parka jacket that made him look ridiculous every day he wore it. Bolin. 

They were both laughing maniacally, the cackle cracking around for everyone to hear while P’Li simply grabbed two sticks of dynamite from a crate in the back of the truck and walked off to the obstacle she intended to obliterate the only way she liked. She high-fived Bolin as the two walked off together, leaving Asami to stand in her pool of embarrassment and non-existent self confidence. 

That wasn’t even the full extent of her practical stupidity with P’Li. The very next day they came across a colossal pillar of hard stone that had blocked the path for as long as the South had been lost underground.

Asami was stunned before it. The size and the accent of it, how it was carved by the ancient dwellers of the South and made from stone, standing like a giant before her and P’Li, who was rigging a large stockpile of different kinds of dynamite at the base to send it tumbling down before them. It was then that the alarm bells rang in Asami’s mind. She really doesn’t have a concern for historical or cultural artifacts. 

“Would you look at the size of this thing?” Asami yelled, waving her arms high above her to grasp at an understanding of just how big the pillar was. P’Li was simply ignoring her while she stacked more and more explosives, sticking in the wiring mechanisms to the fuses and then wrapping the wires to the detonator box clutched in her arm. Unbelievable. The arm flailing continued. “It must've taken hundreds if not thousands of years to carve this thing” Asami deduced, exaggerating a little most probably. 

Once the wiring was completed and the explosives were stacked P’Li let out an unamused sigh and grabbed Asami by the her collar, dragging her from the explosion site with the box in her other hand. She took her behind a pile of rocks blear of the blast radius and, seeing her argument to leave the pillar preserved was lost, Asami plugged her ears with her fingers, not that it did anything to drown out the huge bang from the dynamite ripping through the bottom of the pillar and subsequent falling of said pillar. 

P’Li looked at her handiwork rather proudly, relishing the magnificent explosion and what she had created. the Pillar had fallen perfectly according to her calculations based on the positioning and stockpile of dynamite, falling to be recreated into a perfect bridge for the convoy to drive over to the next portion of the road to the South. 

“Hey, look I made a bridge” she smiled to Asami, who was still sore about the whole ordeal and nevertheless looking rather silly in the first place for protesting. “It only took me what? Ten seconds?” You’re ridiculous. Asami could not see how she could get along with the woman. She was so brash and practically thinking with no regard for anything else so long as the job was completed quickly and preferably straightly. Still the convoy ploughed on along the road, When they stopped Asami would retreat to her portable office and when they continued she either seized her own truck or piled in with Zaheer and Kuvira. She certainly did when they hit snow and her teeth were chattering like a wind up toy. she was not equipped for snow in the slightest.

Sooner or later they were bound to hit a solid wall that P’Li could not blast her way through. That was where they were at. A solid slab of stone that must have been some colossal building of importance in the original layout of the tribe. It just stopped the road dead and seemed like an impenetrable fortress they way it was straight and alone, a faint accent of the tribe marking in a circular motion. Thus far what they had seen was relatively similar markings to that of the Northern Tribe. 

Zaheer stood in front of it, looking like he may just punch his way through; Asami would hardly doubt that could. Kuvira and P’Li joined at either side of him with Asami choosing to remain her truck, Bolin doing the same with his precious digger at the forefront of the convoy as he had been when Asami hadn’t. 

“Looks like we’ve got a little roadblock” Zaheer observed. Little? He did enjoy to state the obvious as Asami had found out in the two weeks travelling together. She new how this would end and thus braced herself for either another large explosion or hours of laboriously waiting for Bolin to tunnel his way through like the badger-mole he resembled. Still Zaheer leaned into closer earshot of his demolition woman. “P’Li what do you got?” He asked, knowing full well she had a device for almost every occasion. She’d even brought her bag of tricks with her. 

She quickly sifted through what explosives she had left, which was not much considering she had the stacked up trolley load before they set off. She pulled out a single stick of dynamite. “I could maybe help if I have two hundred of these” she stated, somewhat defeated in her admission that she would miss out on this explosion. “Thing I’ve only got like ten,” she continued to sift through the bag, finding nothing that jumped out at her. “Plus, you know, five of my own.” And heaven knows what that even means P’LI. She lifted out her hand again, three small grey balls in her large palm. “Couple of cherry bombs,” next came out a stick looking like dynamite at first glance, the Asami saw the white tips. “Road flare” P’Li finished. 

Then she turned to Asami in the truck, bored from waiting. At this point she just wanted to see the city as she new more than anyone that they were getting very close to the entrance. They had been travelling for so long and she was beginning to grow a little stir crazy at the wait elongated by every passing hour that she was stuck in the damn tunnel before it. Her dreams so close to reality. It had kept her up for the past couple of nights, wishing for more of Suyin’s tea and certainly not Bumi’s cooking, which had nearly killed her plenty of times. 

“Too bad we don’t have any nitroglycerin, eh Asami?” P’Li asked rhetorically, calling for another round of laughter due to her basic and therefore stupid mistake. To her own disappointment only Bolin burst out into a fit of laughter in his digging rig, which was basically the same as no one laughing at all. 

Zaheer turned to the rig with Bolin at the helm. “Looks like we’re going to have to dig” he stated, triggering a new kind of reaction in the small creature at the controls of the driller. He had had hardly any opportunity to dig at all thus far, which had perplexed Asami considering the path to the South was thousands of years old. Considering how raring he was to dig absolutely anything back on the sub and then the very little they actually had to dig thus far she was wondering how Bolin had not yet blown a gasket in that hollow head of his. Still she made him laugh this time the way he acted like he was about to explode before looking at Zaheer with wide eyes of excitement and a large, tooth filled smile.

“It will be my pleasure” he confirmed with his thumb up and extended outward and in a devilish voice that told everyone he would gain more pleasure from digging through the wall than he would from anything else in life. 

He put the rig in drive, forcing to the two smaller trucks from the front of the convoy, at which point Opal left the oiler and stood to the side with Zaheer, Kuvira, P’Li and now Asami, who wished to stretch her legs as opposed to remaining in her truck with dead legs. The drill began to spin anticlockwise, gradually picking up speed until it reach its terminal velocity and Bolin began to charge at the solid wall with a slow pace, save cracking the drill and dooming them all. He was giddy, more than such, exhilarated at such an experience. He really is crazy. 

The drill bit penetrated about five inches into the stone before the whole cockpit chugged with a thick black smoke, sending a shockwave of failure throughout the rig and shooting flames from the exhaust. The engines wheezed and failed. Bolin was coughing his guts up in spats of smoke from his lungs. He furiously fiddled with the clutch and the gearstick, then the wheel and both pedals. Absolutely nothing. He pounded the horn with his forehead, defeated by technical difficulties just when it was getting good for him. He was furious.

Opal pulled the back hatch to take a look inside at the engine, no gloves and grease and fluid spitting right in her face, making her attractively dirty instantly to the curious archaeologist who had wandered with her, just in case she may know what was wrong. Asami had always been an aspiring mechanic, it came with being the daughter of Hiroshi Sato, the father of the motor industry and the connoisseur of so many different types of vehicle. She instantly saw the problem, not even needing to look around as soon as she saw the engraved ‘Humac Model P54/813’ on the side of the boiler. Typical piece of crap Humac. 

“I don’t understand this, I just tuned this thing this morning” Opal was wittering on, inside the beast tossing out spare gears and shunts that had been left in from when they were inspecting it at an earlier date. Asami attempted pathetically to grab the engineer’s attention and draw it to the problematic boiler that was wheezing like a cancer patient. “It looks like the rotor’s shot!” Opal yelled back to the rest of her rather small engineering team. She leapt out of the inner workings, Asami still trying to grab her attention by waving her fingers around awkwardly. She felt a little nervous around Opal, the fact that the engineer was rather cute in her own way and that she was completely unapproachable to Asami because of her cuteness and lethality. “Looks like I’ll have pull a spare from one of the trucks” she finished rationalising and looked to walk away. 

“Uuuh” Asami mumbled in her completely non coherence of syllables and noises. 

The engineer slammed her finger to Asami’s chest, right in the middle, making her even more nervous. “Don’t touch anything.I’ll be right back” she warned her. 

But Asami could hardly stand by and waste time and resources unnecessarily when she knew the problem like the back of her hand. She grabbed the wrench that Opal had left unknowingly and began to work her magic just as she had done thousands of times during her time in the museum dungeon. She twisted and turned valves clockwise and counterclockwise before giving the stupid boiler and rather violent whack with the wrench. 

The rig jolted to life again, starting precisely where she stopped in her flail of death and failure. Bolin gasped in joy. “She lives!” He exclaimed while sounding the horn in approval. Asami clicked her neck smugly, turning around as Opal reproached with nothing in her hands and a rather annoyed yet pleased look.

“What did you do?” She asked vacantly, not knowing how or what Asami had done at all. 

The archaeologist leaned on the rig even more smugly, a wide beaming smile on her beautiful face and her slender hands dangling as she leaned. She was proud, so proud, she had finally done something good and well, worthy of respect. She twisted, clicking a joint in her back. 

“The boiler in this baby, it’s the Humac Model P54/813, we have the old 814 in the museum,” she began to tell, proud the entire way while that famous strand of dark crimson hair escaping to draw attention to its lusciousness and then to her sweetly emerald eyes, the glasses on the tip of her nose before she pushed them up again. “The heating cores on the whole Humac line, have always been a bit temperamental so sometimes you gotta” she punched her palm with the other fist, “persuade them” she chuckled to herself afterward in faux state to impress the engineer. 

Opal pushed her away. “Yeah yeah thank you very much.” Asami flinched as a result while Opal shut the hatch to let Bolin continue with the dig. “Two for flinching” she shot at her before a swift one two to her left arm, hard and full of playful spite. Asami smiled as Opal left but then rubbed her arm furiously once she wasn’t looking. So much for acting cool. 

Two hours later they were through the wall and somewhere completely different. It was a large chasm with a long stretched bridge leading off and above a large glowing chandelier of rock with a blue hue. Asami checked the Fisherman’s Account, referring to the section she believed them to be at. “This is it. It’s got to be” she muttered, finding the same image of the rocky ceiling light. It was right before the view of the solitary island of the South Pole. They were so close, so very close to tasting Southern Tribal water and seeing the remains of the buildings and feeling the Southern air. But it was late and Zaheer called for camp to be made. Asami sighed. She would need to wait another eight hours to find out if the South was truly reality or actually a fairy tale. Not long now dad. I’ll find it. The one thought that would keep her up all eight of those hours. She decided she would study the Account from start to finish once more before they headed off, just to be sure of what to expect or not. 

P’Li looked to the blue glow from the ceiling, the same blue that had followed them for fourteen days, sometimes in plain sight and others in the shadows. “That thing is going to keep me up all night” she muttered more to herself than to the group.


	7. Enter the Southern Princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team are getting closer and closer to finding the Southern Water Tribe and now they take the time to relax and discuss why they joined the expedition in the first place. Meanwhile they are being watched by a party of rather inquisitive and curious guests

The blue hued glow of the rock chandelier formation had died down by the time the team had surrounded a fire ready for the daily dose of poison from Bumi’s fatal cooking. Asami as always had retreated to her makeshift desk with the Account bared open on the plank of wood before her and her steel rimmed glasses poised on the tip of her nose. So many times on the trip had she done this, curled into her cave of self inclusion with the book that had become her bible. Much like every other night she was perusing the very passage in which the Fisherman was leading up to a heavy topic of thought and yet the next page was a completely different subject. It had baffled the archaeologist since she first read it on the boat heading South and now that they were so close to hopefully finding the city she was beginning to become annoyed by it. But it was hardly as if she could put the thing down, there was nothing else to be occupied by with the team actively excluding her from everything. To Asami it mattered little however, she would find the city and be back in Republic City to show it to the world before long.

Bumi brought out his cauldron on a trolley, piping hot molten death steaming from inside. It would be even better if had no flavour at all, but then one would still have to put up with the look of it. She set the book aside only for the crazy cook to move to the main team first. “Come and get it!” He shouted in his deep and gravelly voice as usual. He was hardly as unusual as Bolin but Bumi was a definite second. Bumi moved to Suyin first, slapping a solid metal tray with lips around each edge in her smooth hands and then lumping her portion of the terrible food onto it. “For appetizers; Caesar Salad,” then he moved to Opal, who was already disgusted enough with the looming food, “Escargot,” and Bolin, who practically nipping at Bumi for his helping. Figures the animal would want the dog food. It probably wasn’t that she thought just after. It was just that Bolin was a very practical man, very earth like, hence his profession and his values would include practical efficiency, meaning not wasting anything especially food. Part of her liked him fondly, his humour and such. “And your Oriental” Bumi finished, moving on to P’Li and Mrs Beifong. 

Bolin looked at his tray of brownly, sickly orange mush disappointedly at his result considering he was excited about receiving it. “But I wanted the escargot”. Opal lurched at her own plate, the one to which Bolin was ogling. She thrusted it upon him, preferring to go hungry than be subjected to the filth that was Bumi’s cooking once more on the trip. 

“Knock yourself out” she stated flatly, holding her nose to repel the horrid smell. Bolin was happy as he shoved spoonfuls of it into his mouth. 

Next Bumi came over to Asami, handing her a tray and shoveling a ladle full of the goop onto it. She painted on a faux smile to get him to leave as soon as possible. “Thanks Bumi that looks… Greasier than usual” she faked as a compliment. It was always the same grease, the same bad smell and the same horrible taste that would leave all of them with the worst breath imaginable. 

Opposing her assumptions as she pulled out her tablespoon Bumi did not leave. He instead looked at her with a smile. “You like it? Well have some more” he said as he picked up the cauldron and pile on another full helping onto her tray, leaving her more than disgusted while he walked off rather pleased with himself. She heard him say to himself, “You’re so skinny if you poked out your tongue and stood sideways you’d look like a zipper.” You wish. 

Suyin took one spoonful daringly and instantly regretted it, spitting the mouthful out into the fire they were gathered around. After a sip of her evening tea she turned to her daughter and Bolin, P’Li in her peripherals. 

“You know you have been pretty hard on Asami guys” she told them, her age and caring nature excluding herself from the address. She had been the only one to at least try to include Asami and now, on the eve of the least real day she decided to coax everyone into including her. Nothing looked more sad than seeing someone eating Bumi’s concoction alone. “How about we all cut her some slack? She did get us this far” she finished, fortifying her argument. Even P’Li was convinced, and disappointed in herself upon realising that had probably given Asami the worst time on their travels. 

Opal relented almost immediately, remembering that Asami did fix the digging rig. She looked at her mother a little sad herself. “Yeah, you’re right” she said. She then shuffled on her crate seat to face Asami deep in the Account yet again, ignoring her meal. 

“Hey Sato, come sit with us!” the engineer shouted over to her. Asami stood up, nearly banging her knees on the makeshift desk with a rather flamboyant grin on her dumbstruck face. She removed the glasses from her nose and folded them, setting them neatly on the desk before grabbing the rim of her tray. Her emerald eyes were almost aflame with excitement. “You really mean it?” She asked just to be sure. 

Opal suddenly smiled at her, a little wink followed. “Yeah park it here. She gestured to Bolin’s seat while he moved instinctively. 

The archaeologist trudged over, wishing she left the ‘food’ at her desk, but then it would still be in the morning because no one else would touch it. Damn you Bumi and you’re horrid cooking. If that even counts as cooking. She reached the crate still smiling. “This is great,” she began to say awkwardly, not really knowing why she was talking at all as usual. It was the social awkwardness kicking in once more. “I mean, it’s good to be included in your--”

Her zigzag monologue was cut short by an elongated rip from under the pillow on her crate. When she leaned over to look she instantly saw a whoopie cushion, which set Bolin off on a fit of laughter, rolling on his back like a polar bear-dog. All of the group barring Asami looked at him sternly, yelling his name like a group of teachers in a classroom. 

“Forgive me. I could not resist” Bolin excused himself. That was the deciding factor. It was a stupid prank but Asami now liked him regardless. He was certain funny and excessively mad but she found him cute in his own way. A friend she knew he would become even with his poor concept of personal hygiene. 

Opal was next to pipe up once Bolin had returned to his new seat near P’LI, she was staring at the Account that Asami had also brought, she took it everywhere, literally everywhere with her and now Opal was looking at it as it were attached to Asami. 

“Asami don’t you ever close that book?” She asked calmly. Suddenly the rest of them were looking at her, of course not Mrs Beifong. Sato looked nervous suddenly, as if she were naked or something as equally embarrassing. She lowered the spoon that was close enough to her mouth a little relieved that now she didn’t have to eat the disgusting slop before her. She set her tray on the floor to explain why she had the book with her at all times. 

Before she could Suyin opened her mouth. “You must have read it a dozen times by now surely?” She said rather fast before taking her first spoonful. She had eaten worse in her days so she took another with barely any fuss. It stung a little on the back of the tongue and Bumi had cooked up worse food she thought. 

Asami turned to the page that had been bothering her for a month now. “I know I have but there’s a section here that just doesn’t make sense.” She held up the book for Suyin and her daughter to see while the mother ate some more of the food, the taste gradually deteriorating in her mouth. They saw what she saw, only in a dead language that made no sense at all, glyphs and lines of curves with some pictures and carvings that resembled the old Northern Tribe. “You see here the Fisherman seems like he’s leading up to something,” she pointed to one particular sentence that lay right next some etching of a rather tribal pattern in blue with a bright white shadow. “He calls it ‘The Spirit of the Light” it could mean the power source I’ve been studying but when he goes to explain it,” she flicked the page to another diagram that made completely no sense to Suyin or Opal. “It just cuts off. It’s almost like there’s a missing page” she finished rather disappointedly, bringing the Account closer to herself and closing it for the night. The riddle had plagued her mind for the whole two months and she was no closer to figuring out what it could be. The Spirit of Light? The spirits died thousands of years even before the South did. 

“Sato, relax.” It was P’Li, of course it was P’Li, brash and booming like the explosives she loved so much from the other side of the fire pit with her tray in her lap but with no food on her spoon at all. “We don’t get paid overtime for this” she stated in her edgy voice, like a knife. She was so untouchable, like her skin was made of steel and her temper was a time bomb, yet still she had the sarcasm when she chose to. She was as strange was Bolin was really, such a broody woman but also one with some form of personality there. Asami had assumed it came down to a flawed relationship, or even a bad childhood with multiple siblings older than she. Or maybe P’Li was just an agitated person right through to the core. Asami didn’t know for sure and with the way the woman was set on acting with her she feared she never would. 

“I know, I know. I just sometimes get carried away” she told them, beginning to get giddy with the excitement for the next day considering they must be close. She shuffled her rear a little in the pillow to brush the excitement away. “But that’s what this is all about right?” She was trying to appear more of a fictional person than that of a plucky archaeologist on a multi-million yuan expedition with a host of complete strangers. It was already failing to work with her desired effect. “Adventure, discovery, teamwork, right?”

They all looked at her with rather vacant expressions, not connecting at all with her reasoning behind her being here. She knew really why they had signed up for another crack at the South. Money. The one thing she had never cared for, not because her father made sure she was set up before he passed, but because it was a silly thing to care about really. Money was a resource that would never run out really there was so much of it in the world. More would be printed every hour of everyday for longer than Asami Sato would live for. There was no need to chase or fantasise over it because if one simply lived life they would have enough of it to survive. She never really liked the museum dungeon but it was a job and it meant she would never starve. But money was certainly not her motivation for anything, least of all finding the South. 

Still P’Li answered her. “I’m gonna say money.”

“Money” reiterated Mrs Beifong, followed by her daughter and granddaughter. Bolin just continued to eat his food. 

Asami sighed, defeated. “Guess I set myself up for that one huh?” The awkwardness had still a hold on her but she tried her hardest. It had been so long since she had actually needed to talk to people. Even at her boarding school she had only a few fleeting friends that she would talk to regularly. It was always work with Asami Sato, ever since then and beyond without her father to ensure she didn’t sell her soul to herself. She missed him. She missed him more than ever now. It was his dream as well as hers to see the city and now that it was looking like she might, she missed him so. 

Suyin was passing behind her to get her canteen when she spotted Asami rubbing the back of her neck rather awkwardly, all of those nights hunched over her desk with the oil lamp low engulfed in the Account. “Something wrong with your neck there Asami?” She asked caringly as she always did. She was a Matriarch there was no doubt about that, motherly to all. Asami confirmed and within a second Suyin grabbed her jawline and twisted her head to both sides firmly, creating a stout crack from both movements as the archaeologist yelled briefly. Asami was cured. 

“How’s that?” she asked after picking up her canteen. Asami had a smile on her face her neck felt so fine. 

“How did you do that?” 

“Omashu Medical College, trained with the Dai Li too” was Suyin’s response. An organisation with a questionable reputation were the Dai Li, used hundreds of years ago to stage a deadly coup in Ba Sing Se. Asami now looked at her questionably, wondering what else was behind the loving expression Suyin always had on her face. She held up her hand. “Don’t worry I’m not secret service or anything I just trained medical with a few veterans. This was while I was at Ba Sing Se one year,” she began to tell. Opal had no doubt heard this story a dozen times before as well as Mrs Beifong but the mention of the Earth Government intrigued Asami. She loved visiting the provinces. Omashu, Kiyoshi, Yokoi and even the capital once or twice with her father as a girl. Suyin pointed to her mother on the other side of the circle staring absently into the flames. 

“You can blame her. She’s the one who settled down in the capital.” She then pulled out a necklace from her bust under her green uniform. “I’ve got metal from the capital,” she referred to the small lump of meteorite firstly, “sandstone from Omashu.” There was an equal lump of smooth sandy rock next to the metal. “Flash ice from the north and wood from the Fire Nation. Mom hung round with a very weird crowd” she told, gesturing to the perpetually frozen ice and then the rather crisp wooden piece. Mrs Beifong chuckled to herself. “And then halfway through medical college I got drafted,” she said, remembering some conflict that Asami could not. “One minute I’m studying gross anatomy in the classroom. The next I’m patching up the military from bandits in the valleys” she finished and tucked in her necklace. Such an exciting life. Now she truly admired Suyin. She was not only a Doctor and a Matriarch and a mother but she she was a genuine medic, saving lives in the combat or at least making sure they weren’t in pain. She herself was a veteran and deserved an immense amount of respect.

Bumi popped in from nowhere. “Main course coming up” he announced. Everyone declined all at once, hoping and pleading that he would not pile more awfulness on their trays. He chuckled at that, knowing they’d have to eat it sometime. “Don’t you worry, it’ll keep and keep and keep.” Of course it will Bumi. It’ll never go stale with your handiwork.

Mrs Beifong was lighting another cigarette as she had done thousands of times probably in the two weeks it had taken them thus far. “Thank the spirits I lost my sense of taste years ago” she said before shovelling the least of her food into the fire. Everyone else did the same after her, even Asami and P’Li. Bolin had finished his ages ago anyway and had left in search of entertainment as he was hardly one for sharing stories. 

It took them all less than thirty minutes to pitch up their respective tents. Opal had offered Asami a spot opposite her own with Suyin and P’Li around the same space to form a complete circle. It was the most fun really Asami had had in awhile. Joking and messing with Opal as the two took longer to complete the pitching Suyin laughed with them while P’Li just did as she meant, not bothering to enter the playfulness. Suyin attempted to break her mood by throwing a pillow at her harsh face. It did bring a small smile to her face but the tall demolition woman was simply too broody. 

Suddenly, once all the tents had been erected and the sleeping mats were out Asami began to chuckle as she lay on her back. Opal laughed back as a result, almost flirting with her. “What?” She asked her still in mid laughter. 

Asami rolled over to lay on her chest. “I was just remembering this one time my dad took me camping near a river in the Fire Nation” she told, remembering the experience as it flowed to her. It was such a night for storytelling and now it fell to Asami to tell a tale of the legendary Hiroshi Sato in his prime, at his best and before the hideous drama of the courtrooms that pushed him into his early grave. Opal was in full attention and it was the first time that Asami had seen her without the rail cap on her head. Her hair was indeed rather beautiful. “I found something in the river. I was a genuine arrowhead from the days of the hundred year war. Hell the way my dad went on about it you would have thought I’d discovered one of them Air Temples.” Opal giggled at the story. She had never met Hiroshi but her father had and the stories he told the budding engineer of their raid of the Air Temple made her admire Hiroshi herself,and now she was admiring Asami Sato as well. “It wasn’t until I was twelve that I discovered the thing was a piece of metal that had been almost fossilised but that was just how dad was.”

“Do you miss him?” Suyin asked her from the side. She was settling down for bed herself. 

Asami looked at her with a thin layer of tears in her emerald eyes, her hair flowing gracefully down the side of her face. “More than anything.”

Bolin was walking across the tenting field in some childish looking pyjamas with a stuffed animal in his hands. It was a ginger and white tailed Fire Ferret, Asami had seen a real one once before while visiting the nation and the stuffed toy looked so cute. 

“That is so cute” Bolin muttered as he hugged his Fire Ferret. He then continued walking to find his own place to sleep, most probably in the dirt. 

Asami now turned back to Opal, suddenly curious as to why she was even there in the first place. “Hey, Opal, how does a teenager, no offense, replace her father as the chief engineer and mechanic on a multi-million yuan expedition?” Asami asked rather bluntly. 

Opal wasn’t offended in the slightest, more like she was proud of her status, especially considering her mother was also on the team and had been for longer than she. “Well I took this job because my dad retired” she told her simply, looking to her mother as if it were more her story to tell than Opal’s. Asami followed her gaze to Suyin.

“Bataar and I are working on a housing development project in the Earth Government so he’s retired from mechanics” Suyin stated. 

Now it was back to Opal. “He’s back at home with my four brothers. Hyon’s an artist and Wing and Wei are athletes. Junior would never touch a monkey wrench so I guess I just took to it with my dad” she told Asami, a cute tale to match her personality. And she was finally being so human with the archaeologist. Non professional and just natural, allowing Asami to not only get along famously with her, but to see the real Opal, the cute and cuddly Opal as she was being now before her. Asami would make sure that she remained friends with the engineer from now on, once they returned to the surface. 

Mrs Beifong was the next and final person to walk past and again Asami had no idea how she was walking so expertly without cane or guide. Still she shrugged it off. 

“Forget your jammies Mr Beifong?” She asked so innocently. Mrs Beifong completely blanked her

“I sleep in the nude.”

Suyin tossed Asami a sleeping blinder. “You’ll want these. She sleep walks.” Dear lord. But then again Suyin was her daughter so she would now for sure of not if she did.

P’Li finally said a word, laying flat on her back with the blinders on and a match in the ear. “I just like to blow things up” she said almost monotonically putting the straight end of the match in her mouth. Asami was hoping she’d say something because up until this point the woman had remained as constant a mystery as the missing page in the Fisherman’s Account. 

Suyin loomed over her, pulling the blinder from her eyes to stare at her. “Come on P’Li, tell the girl the truth” she instructed her rather sternly. She then dropped the blinder back on her face with a slapping noise. The demolition lady pulled then down to her upper bust and moved the matched back to her ear. 

“My family owned a flower shop in the Fire Nation” she sighed, obviously embarrassed. It suited too, such a broody independent and unfeminine woman to come from such a humble and polite background was why she was the way she was. Asami had her figured now. Still she continued her own family tale. “We would sell roses, carnations, you name it,” she continued.

“So one day, my father has me making these corsages for a damn prom. You know the stupid thing the girls put on their wrists,” she twists her other free hand around her right wrists, both hands still gloved and her chest covered in a green tank top much Asami’s own. “And the girls are all like ‘where is it? When will it be ready? Does it match my dress?’ it’s hell.

“Anyway, I guess there was this gas leak next door of gas or what. Boom!” She made another gesture with her hands, practically leaping from her sleeping mat. “No more laundry. Blew me right through the front window of the flower shop.” She rolled over on the mat, striking her match in her fingers, creating a small flame in her hands. “It was like a sign from the spirits. I found myself that boom” P’Li finished, exhausted with talking about her secret flower shop life so much. 

The whole eir of the conversation was cut suddenly by a scratching a digging sound some ways off from the main site. It was Bolin digging himself a hole in the ground in which to sleep. He chuckled once he was completely submerged in his hidey hole and turned off his small flashlight. 

Asami had to finally ask them. “So what’s Bolin’s story?” 

Suyin snapped right at her daughter quite seriously. “Opal, don’t tell her. You shouldn’t have told me, but you did. Now I’m telling you,” meaning Asami, “don’t want to know.” She pulled up the oil lamp and blew it out, thus ending the story telling and signalling it was time to go to sleep. It hardly took any of them much time to doze off and once they had the camp fell silent apart from Bumi’s snoring. Mr Beifong got up once and then quickly went back. 

They came in the dead of the night. Five of them in all, crouched and covered, Their masks were large, enough to cover both head and torso with tussles on each other their wrists. Each of their masks were different, large faces made of wood with a blue hued glow from the mouths. By their physique at least one of them was female. They all carried sickle styled weapons with a polearm length staff to carry to the picks. They were like phantoms, or harmful spirits of old yet once they reached the camp site they simply gazed upon the sleeping bodies. 

The female one signalled the others, indicating she was the leader. Her skin was tanned and as she reached Asami’s satchel over by her makeshift desk her fingers were just slightly shorter than the archaeologists yet with more muscle in her hands. Her arms were the same; thick and muscular biceps with an arm band tattoo on her left, dark and then white with triangular segments. 

She removed her mask at the protest hushed syllables of her party. She was gorgeous. A tanned face with sapphire blue eyes glowing in the darkness with a somewhat sharp and chunky cheekbones. Her lips were perfect and just left from her nose below the eye lay two paint strokes of the same blue as her eyes with a dot closer to the bridge. 

She perused the contents of the satchel, a complete invasion of privacy but by the way the woman moved she had to be tribal. She tossed out book after book, not finding the Fisherman’s Account because of course Asami was sleeping with it. She quickly came upon a picture frame of Asami as a child on her father’s lap and the woman instantly connected with it. She felt some sort of connection with it, a girl and her father alone with no mother. She acted sheepishly around it, looking deeply into the frame with her prominent eyes. 

As she was about to move on back into the satchel something sounded off from the tents. It was Asami getting up. The woman moved like a flash, hiding under the desk with her party moving back away from the site. 

The woman looked at the archaeologist as she stood from her tent in her tank top and slacks, her hair a mess and a flashlight in her hand. She was moving for the toilet set up away from camp near the bridge. The woman’s mouth opened, an instant flutter of attraction worming its way into her six pack of a stomach once she saw the emerald eye glowing in the dark.


	8. Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami, in the middle of the night, stumbles on a trip to the toilet and in doing so causes the entire campsite to burn, prompting a chain of events that eventually allows her to meet someone he would have never have imagined. Princess Korra, beautiful and stunning as the lock eyes in perpetual darkness

Asami stumbled a little as she stood from her tent, being carelessly careful not to wake Opal who was so closely opposite to her. The engineer slept as she woke, cutely and like a child Asami thought. She grabbed a flashlight and the trowel with the roll of toilet paper on the handle. Duty called in the middle of the night and she knew it was the dastardly cooking of their anarchist chef. Zaheer had designated a small area off to the south of camp, close to the bridge near a mound of rock where one would take care of business so she was headed there. 

Firstly she stumbled over to her desk to grab her glasses, still clutching the Fisherman’s Account in her left hand, she would most probably read the pages over again while she was near the mound. She completely failed to spot the scattered books and pages and scraps of paper that the tribal girl had littered all around the desk and the floor. Asami was still half asleep which was why she didn’t spot the woman crouched under the desk in the first place.

She was skittish herself, trying not be noticed under the plank of crude wood and yet worrying about where her party had scattered off to. She looked around to spot them but only saw her large body mask a few feet from the desk. If Asami hadn’t noticed her hiding rather loud and obviously she would certain not notice the mask just laying in the pitch black. The tribal woman clutched at the blue glowing crystal around her neck to hide its tiny light source from Asami. The archaeologist yawned loudly as the tribal girl shuffled a little, retreating back further into the alcove. The glasses were picked up and placed sluggishly onto Asami’s nose while she turned and moved to the mound with her flashlight failing to spot the tanned and toned skin of the intruder under the desk. She yawned again while she walked as a sloth would to her destination. 

Asami passed all the sleep bodies on her way; Opal laying on her belly with her arms folded under her face to act as a pillow. Her mother was on her side in almost a ball shape with her faint sheet covering her body. P’Li was still on her back almost like a vampire with her arms draped almost anywhere. Mrs Beifong was invisible to Asami’s relief although she wouldn’t have noticed anyway the sand was layered on so thick in her eyes. The tents of Kuvira and Zaheer were both closed and Bumi was snoring like a repeating whistle. By the time she reached the mound she was nearly wide awake. 

A small hole was dug with the trowel and she stuck it in the earth like a sword in battle. She then pointed the flashlight on the rocky mound, allowing it to face upward to the chandelier hung high above the bridge. Now was the woman’s chance to escape the camp site and escape she did. In one fluid motion like a stream of water she slid from under the desk with a large stride of her slender and muscular legs, leaving from the back of the fire pit and away from the camp entirely, meeting with her party a few yards away. 

In their hushed electric whispers they were speaking a foreign language, the very same that was written inside the decaying pages of the Fisherman’s Account. In her ear the woman heard a tribesman say her name. She understood the word he was saying. 'Princess, Princess.' She was too fixated on the woman at the rocky mount who was digging her small hole for some unknown purpose. She was locked in on the eyes. Those sweet and beautiful emerald eyes that stood like stars in the darkness across the chasm as the tribal princess moved along the far wall, miles away from Asami’s field of good vision even if she was wide awake by now. 

Still the male tribal pestered her as she was perched along the rock formation with her body mask held up so her sapphire eyes could see the beautiful emeralds. The light blue face paint below her left eye stood just as prominently as the blue all over her. She had a cloth sling out of blue and almost pinkish to cover her bust, with the same to cover her waist and cuffs at her bare feet and strong hands. Her chest was ripped, a strong and built body that indicated she was a warrior, if not she certainly was not ladylike. She gazed upon Asami still even as the archaeologist untied the string of her slacks to finally get to work with the flashlight shining up at the rocky chandelier. 

Princess Korra! The tribal woman heard in her ear in her native tongue from the men at the beginning of the rocky indention of the cliff face. Now she saw the light shining to chandelier and bolted her her perch. She knew what was about to come. 

A single wisp of white light floated down from the chandelier to where the flashlight was sitting. Asami swatted at the light once she saw it, not wanting to be disturbed by anything really and if the light stayed there she would surely not fall back to sleep for the few hours remaining to her. The thing buzzed around when she swatted. What are you? She asked herself upon a second flail of her arms. It looked like a wisp or something from a dandelion once it was blown only made of light. Still it annoyed her as she wanted to be alone. 

Asami Sato grabbed the toilet paper trowel by the spade and with her tongue pursed between her lips, her glasses teetering on the tip of her nose again. With a swift thrust she swung the trowel down upon the light hard. It flew around to her other side to escape her thundering crash with the trowel. She’d had enough of whatever it was and thusly failing both arms around, trying to hit anything and failing again. 

Once she tossed the trowel back onto the rock mount it instantly set aflame, startled Asami straight away. More than that it sparked a chain reaction. She looked to the single wisp of light finally realising what it was; a firefly. Crap. A host of hundreds of the little arsonists came fluidly from the holes of the chandelier. 

“Fire” she said to herself as they came from the rocks, heading straight for the camp site. Before she knew it she was charging back to the campsite full throttle barely managing to pull up her slacks and tie them by the string, yelling as she went. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Zaheer was awoken, his teeth grinding and his chin square still If he had any hair it would be unkempt and frizzy from his lack of sleep. He had a ticking analog alarm clock in his bear like hand looking frustrated and furious. “I’m gonna kill her” he muttered to himself through his gritted teeth. In a huff he got up from his mat and pushed away the curtain of his tent expecting to see Asami creating a fuss over nothing. “Sato go back to bed--” he was about to finish but was cut short as soon as he saw the orange and yellow blaze coming from the collection tents. 

Suyin and her daughter, P’Li, Bolin and Bumi were all up with buckets of the drinking water in their hands, lobbing it onto the burning cloth and such. More and more of the unmet sign ons were rushing to put it out too with the rest buckling up the supplies and munitions onto the trucks and wagons. Kuvira grabbed a man with a bucket in has hands, throwing him in front of her to lob his load onto the blaze. “Get some water on that fire!” She yelled exceptionally louder than she ever had done. 

Zaheer rubbed the sand from his eyes and pointed to the bridge and the caves beyond. “No time,” he yelled over the crackling and burning wood and such, the ash and flares rising with the smoke with the tribals watching no doubt from somewhere safe. The main members of the team looked to him. “Into those caves, move it, move it, move it” he ordered them. Bumi was first to mount up on the nutrition wagon loaded with the food, water an other nutritional supplies, snapping at the clutch and releasing the brake to move across the slim and long bridge. Bolin jumped into the drilling rig and quickly got it up and running to charge on after the cook. The rest of the convoy got quickly into formation and Kuvira soon picked up her commander in her wagon. 

Opal and Suyin were in the back of a munitions truck with Asami running frantically in the background with the flames beginning to engulf the entire camp in a smoldering blaze. There was the oiler behind Asami with a man at the wheel. The fireflies decided to land on one of the can, melting through the crude wood and setting alight the contents.

“Asami jump!” Opal yelled, grabbing her hand and pulling her in just as the oiler exploded in a flurry of boiling shrapnel and debris. 

The bridge began to crumbling after the exploding oiler, the foundations turning to dust and cracking the way along the start. After another explosion from the camp the already weak bridge finally gave up, the final straw on its back destroying the little foundation at last. It crumbled into the air, the entire convoy slipping down and down with it into the abyss. Asami was thrown from the truck when Opal was grabbed by her mother and the truck flailed about down the pitch black cave. Bolin tried to keep his rig on the bridge long enough to plough up and into the caves but it was no use. 

“No, no no no no!” He yelled trying the clutch and the gear stick in all directions fifteen times with his foot hammering on the pedals in a cluster of desperation. He was terrified looking back as the rest of the smaller trucks slipped down into the chasm of darkness. 

Zaheer saw another truck coming at him in the face and swerved the wheel, sending his truck to nowhere with a gasp. It was a colossal crash for everyone.

Mere minutes later the commander lit a match, such a small flame and source of minuscule light between his fingertips on an invisible stick that he must had retrieved from P’Li. He looked around to see nothing still. “Alright sound off” he ordered whoever might be there, not knowing for sure who was alive or who was dead or if there was anyone around him at all. “Who’s not dead?” He asked straight after, needing a response as soon as they could give him one. 

Opal was the first to let a moan, followed by her mother and grandmother Then P’Li let loose a manly groan and then Bolin did the same. Bumi let it lie for a second then came out with one of his crazy ramblings. 

“Damn fire bugs went and bit me! They bit me!” He let rip across the empty dark space that was nowhere and yet everywhere. 

Opal lit her own flashlight, followed by Zaheer doing the same to see the destruction and wreckage that the convoy had become. It was such a mess. An amalgamation of metal, rubber and cloth from all of the wagons. Most of the vehicles were just scrapped, done for, never to be used again. Some more were in decent shape but by the look of their radiators and engines, they would lay in the chasm forever. The engineer looked around with her flashlight as her mother Suyin looked over the team, checking if anything was broken or not. To her own surprise everyone was in good shape physical, no broken bones or dislocations. 

“Opal give me a status report” Zaheer called out to his engineer who was rubbing her backside to rid the flat pain from her tailbone.

She popped up from her looking. “It’s not as bad as it could have been boss,” she reported in a rather harsh voice, winded most probably by the fall from how many feet above. She checked the convoy over again. At least two trucks were unsalvageable and the rest were in very poor condition by her overlooking inspections. “We totaled rigs two and seven,” she looked to Bolin’s precious driller. “The digger looked like it will still run, lucky for us we landed in something soft” she referred to the mild swelling along her rear as she rubbed it again. 

The geologist had a piece of the ground between his tweezers, looking through a magnifying glass with his tongue out, figuring out what substance or variation of his beloved dirt this was. “Pumice Ash” he proclaimed before dropping the speck and putting away his tools in his trouser pockets. He had lost his parka jacket in the rush so he was sitting in his tank top and his cargo pants beside P’Li. He then looked up and deduced how tall the cavern was. “We are standing in the base of a dormant volcano” he announced with a small sigh following. 

Kuvira fired her flare gun, sending a ball of flame and red light high into the upper levels of the cavern, proving Bolin to be correct when it took several seconds for the flare to reach a suitable height. “It just keeps going” she said.

“Maybe that’s our ticket out of here” P’Li stated flatly. The flare exploded instantly after she piped up, revealing a flat dead end at the top of the shaft. 

“Maybe not” Kuvira countered.

Bolin pointed to the top of the shaft. “The magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, effectively blocking the exit” he reported rather astutely. This was really why he was here, demonstrating his expertise in the behaviour of the earth and ground in order to decide how the team should proceed. Opal smiled a little smile at him in thanks for his repertoire. 

Suyin was a little uneasy at the whole thing, no really knowing the science or behaviour behind what Bolin was telling. “Wait,” she ordered, stepping back with her soft hands out in front of her. In truth she was a little frightened. The thought of being active in a volcano, no matter how dormant it was was unsettling. Being a native of the Earth Government she wasn’t so comfortable around the volcanoes of the Fire Nation. How one had been left near the South Pole was a mystery to her. 

Somehow, near about the time that the Southern Tribe was submerged under the earth the heat from the mantle or deeper must have formed the explosive mountain in a freak anomaly of nature. she was doctor though, she couldn’t have the theory or answer even close to the truth. It hardly mattered anyway. They were in the pit of it now and that was it. 

Still she held up her hands in front of her chest. Her hair was rather a mess in their escape from the flame and she had a small smudge of soot on her forehead. “So you’re saying this thing could blow at anytime?” She asked rather incredulously, hoping she wasn’t about to be proven correct in her feared assumption. 

Bolin was shaking his head. “No no, that would take an explosive force of great magnitude.” It was at least reassuring when he said it but it was short lived as soon as there came a winding and creaking sound from next to him. It was P’Li with a clock in her hands. She was manipulating a timed explosive with more dynamite worked into the back.

She stopped in her winding with the screwdriver, looking awkwardly as the rest of the team looked at her with stern eyes. She threw the screwdriver away and hid the bomb behind her back. “Maybe I do that later” she instructed herself. She was a lot more human than the night previous, calm considering their predicament. Still no one looked to where Asami had been thrown to. Opal had looked for her at first but once she saw nothing and Zaheer had demanded her to report she thought the archaeologist found the team herself. Now she was looking for her again around the circle they had formed. More men and women were waking from concussions from the fall, retrieving themselves from the heaping wreckage. 

Zaheer looked to the top of the shaft again, judging how far it was really. It may have looked closer or farther from where they were standing but his sense of sight even in the semi darkness was still good enough to make a statement at least. “If we could blow the top off of that thing,” he started, thinking of the massive cannon he had made sure they had packed from the sub two weeks ago, “we’d have a straight shot to the surface” he judged, now thinking of the hot air balloon they had also saved. It was a surefire plan and as it was formulating in his tactile mind he could see it working perfectly, so long as they found the city in the first place. 

He turned around to look for Asami, who hadn’t said a work thus far. “What do you think Miss Sato?” There was no reply. He yelled again. “Sato?” Again nothing. Asami was simply not there at all.

She was in another section of the cavern, laying on her back against a rock with her shoulder leaking with the painful crimson of blood. Her glasses were amazing still intact and still on her face. She was alone, in the dark and knocked out with the tribals crowding around her. They were mumbling the foreign tongue again and the tribal princess was looming over the unconscious archaeologist. The men were muttering to her, pleading with the strong, tanned beauty in their language when Asami came round. 

She was terrified once she saw them all. 

The Princess quickly removed her mask, allowing Asami to see the tanned skin and the sapphire eyes and the face paint under them. They were glowing, so delightfully and putting the sincere and serine gorgeousness of the Southern Princess to the still skittish Republic City Archaeologist. The burning pain from her shoulder was instantly numbed at the sight of the tribal girl. In a hushed whisper Asami said instinctively, “You’re beautiful.” She didn’t know who the hell the tribal girl was, if she could understand the common language or if she could even hear Asami but by the way that the men behind her still in the intimidating masks laughed she guessed they could indeed understand some of what Asami had let slip. And if the men behind could hear, the Southern beauty leaning on her certainly could. The Princess smiled at Asami, running her index finger over her face from the forehead to the tip of her nose, as if she was checking if Asami was real or just a spirit or apparition. 

She then found the running red from Asami’s shoulder, directing her mesmerising eyes to it. Asami found it herself and winced at it, as if the pain suddenly came running back to her. She suddenly scrambled to get away from the beautiful girl but the princess firmly planted her hands on Asami’s shoulder, pinning her to the ground. She looked to her party, whispering in her native tongue. It was one that Asami understood. They’re talking Southern! It was the dead language being spoken before her and she was sat there with a bleeding shoulder. But where is the City? It had to be near. 

The men presented a skin filled with water to the princess and with a fluid arm motion the bright blue of the liquid seeped out of the skin of its own accord, or her accord. She was bending it, she was actually waterbending before Asami, a technique that had been dead for thousands of years old on the surface. But not here, not underground where the Southerners had certainly survived. 

Asami Sato was overwhelmed. Still the princess manipulated the water over to Asami’s shoulder where she placed it over the open wound and clamped down on it with her hand. Asami breathed heavily, feeling a strange and soothing sensation along her left side where the wound was. A second later the princess removed her lovely smooth hand to reveal the wound completely healed and perfectly clean, only damp with the remaining water. 

The Princess leaned in more forward for some reason, grinning a little goofily. For a split second it was as if she was about to greet Asami with a soft kiss but just before she could the ground began to shake mildly. It was enough to force the Southerners to flee. The leapt and strode deeper into the cave with great speed. Asami looked to the horizon to see the lights from the digger creeping over the cliff. 

She gave chase, pursuing her Southern beauty, refusing to let the woman escape without another word. She stumbled over the rocks and through the cave’s formations, not looking back as the digger closed the gap between it and her. Still she did not see the tussles or the blue of the party given off by their Water Tribe crystals and jewelry.

“Who are you?” She yelled into the darkness with the impending dooming noise of the digger just behind her. The cave seemed to continue forever as she ran, not made for a sprint of this length. She could hear the faint footsteps and rapid dislodging of small rocks but they were nowhere to be seen. “Where are you going?” She yelled again but no answer came to her. Asami Sato came to a small, compact opening to daylight. Daylight? It was small and compressed her as she charged through. It opened up to a different world. A cliff surrounded by a mist. “Who are you?!” She repeated a second time, the tones of her voice being carried off by the open echo. 

The view was stupefying and she was hardly phased by the crushing and crunching sound of the digger ripping through the earth wall behind her. 

It was there, right before her eyes. It was there and it was real. It was a real live marvel of splendor and just actual physicalness. 

There, out beyond the cliff after a lake of molten lava that, mixed in with the water from another source and a thousand of the little lights elsewhere as well as some other light source that none of the could see. Out there with a small wooden bridge connecting it to the rest of the world. Out there after a month of searching for it and her entire life dreaming about actually seeing it with her determined emerald eyes was the thing they were looking for. Suyin had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn’t simply dreaming and out there as everyone else, even Kuvira and Zaheer stood with their jaws slacked open and refusing to close. Out beyond the cliff where they were standing was the City of the Southern Water Tribe. The Southern Water Tribe, living, breathing, completely and utterly alive. Asami was brought to tears in seconds as images of her father flooded her mind at that sight.

She took a mental photograph. This one’s for you dad. 

There was hardly anytime to take it in fully as from behind them dropped in the party that had seen to her wound. Zaheer quickly pulled out his pistol and aimed it straight at the princess in the front. 

“Holy cats, who are these guys?” He asked rather flustered and frantic. 

Asami forced his gun down. “They have to be Southerners!” She exclaimed, thankful that the beauty behind the mask had returned to find her. Asami hoped she would remove the mask so she could see the face again. 

Kuvira was hardly convinced, keeping her pistol low and ready to shoot should she need to. “That’s not possible!” 

“I’ve seen this in the Swamp in the Earth Government,” Bumi began rambling from the back of the group. “They can smell fear just by looking at you, so keep quiet.” His commentary made absolutely no sense. Then again none of this made any. The South had been submerged thousands of years ago but yet there was a group of five or so tribals there looking at the fearless explorers with sickle weapons ready to fillet them alive should they need to. 

The Princess in front began speaking in her native Southern tongue, excessively fast that Asami nearly didn’t catch. She plucked up enough courage to answer the Princess to the best of her ability. The tribal was dumbstruck. She hardly expected the surface dweller to answer her in her own tongue. 

The mask was sheepishly removed to fully reveal just how beautiful she really was. A short bob of brunette hair that fell just to her jawline. Her eyes were still dominant over her tanned skin but she was gorgeous to Asami regardless. You really are beautiful. She began to speak again, a slight deviation on the basic Southern language that was used thousands of years ago. Again Asami matched her language and spoke to her again. They repeated the process again in some form of ancient Fire Nation speak and then again in some form of old Earth Kingdom. Bolin yelled from the back. “They speak my language!” He ran to the princess, whispering something in her ear. She punched him hard enough that he almost flew backwards. 

Suyin was clapping at the punch, a solid hit to the man’s face that would certainly give him a black eye for the rest of the trip back. Opal was smiling fairly too. “I like her” Suyin commented. Opal grunted in approval. 

Zaheer was next to step forward, over his geologist leaving him to his pain. He stood almost regally, a diplomat for the United Republic and for the rest of the human race above ground. “We are explorers from the surface world,” he proclaimed, mostly to the woman who was standing in front of her party, she was smiling mostly. “We come in peace” he finished rather boldly. 

The Princess pointed to the Tribe off in the distance and beyond the mist of the burning water flowing from somewhere unseen. “Welcome to the Southern Water tribe” she greeted them in common tongue to Asami’s delight. She had figured out a while ago that their language as based on a root dialect much like the rest of the evolved languages throughout the world, even common. The barrier she had thought would be a problem had dissolved and now she was looking at the princess who was still as beautiful as ever. If there was such a thing as instant attraction that was as genuine as love, Asami was certainly feeling it now. Opal could tell too as she nudged Asami Sato in the ribs gently to send her a wink. 

Kuvira side stepped closer to Zaheer, whispering almost as the rest of the team interacted with the rest of the tribals. The commander took his partner over to the digger rather suspiciously. 

“Commander, there were not supposed to be people down here,” Kuvira reminded him. He grunted rather annoyed by the sound of it. “This changes everything” she finished, as if they had a plan if there was not a society down there. 

Zaheer turned to her rather menacingly, anger and fear all molded in his eyes. “This changes nothing.”


	9. A Day to Fall in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team has arrived in the Souther Water Tribe, the most stunning and gorgeous city to have existed despite its state. After a less than smooth meeting with King Tonraq, Zaheer becomes convinced that Asami and her obvious swooning for the southern beauty Korra will give him the time and angle he needs to gather the information he wants

The bridge was crude and poorly made, just left to dangle over the lake of simmering lava and the mixing in pure water from the other side of the lake. The City itself stood in the center of whole thing, on a circular raised disk of earth and obsidian with the buildings made of a mixture of petrified ice and marble so that they all looked a special shade of white blue much more splendid than the architecture of their northern sisters. It looked like something from a dream, one that Asami had been having for years since she was little a girl and now that she was approaching the doors to the very city she had been dreaming of it was beginning to look more and more like she’d died and that the city was heaven; the Southern Princess leading the convoy down the wooden bridge being a goddess before her. Asami hadn’t asked if the Fisherman’s Account was intact or even in the truck; she was too mesmerised by the girl in front, the toned legs as she walked, left right, left right. She was barefoot still and even her feet looked beautiful, the tanned skin and all of the little muscles a little visible in the humidity. Her curves were even toned, her hips inviting Asami in as the truck moved slowly still as the princess led then to the inner city. Her arms were equally as enticing, muscular masses after her forearm and elbow that told Asami a mere embrace would keep her safe and destroy any intruder that would separate them; and all Asami had wanted since their little moment in the cave was be inside the Princess’s soft and warm embrace, to belong with her and be kept safe by her. Her lips were the same, inviting and swirling messages of deep and romantic thought within the somewhat drowsy archaeologist, the way they were curved much like her own and prominent in their fullness. She wondered what it would it be like if the driller hadn’t approached her in the cave, if the princess would have kept going and what she would have done to Asami, or what Asami would have let her do to her. If she had begun to find Opal cute in the two weeks of knowing her and being around her constantly she must have thought the nameless princess utterly irresistible and cosmical before her, appealing to both the eye and mind and everything else all over Asami’s trembling body as they drew to the gates. 

She could hear the faint sound of Bolin getting slightly less giddy than herself behind them in another truck with P’Li and Bumi. He was chuckling rather creepily. “I’m so excited” he let slip over the sliming magma below.

They headed straight to the throne room, no nonsense in between with Bumi, Mrs Beifong, P’Li and Opal staying with the convoy outside as Zaheer only needing those who were really necessary; Kuvira of course because he would never dream of a meeting or negotiation without her, Suyin because of her tender and caring nature to possibly soothe things over should they need to be and of course Asami, who would have protested she see the King and learn more of the culture even if Zaheer had requested she remain with the rest outside. Now that she was here and alive she was going to see and do everything under their artificial sun, absolutely everything she could. 

Tonraq, as the princess had called the King by name, was rather old and frail but still had the muscular and sturdy figure of a warrior or old, torn apart and ravaged by the beast that time was. He had a black mane of hair coming from his head with a rough bear like beard of black, much like Asami imagined Zaheer could grow. He was guarded by two natives, bald apart from short and reserved ponytail buns and wielding spears and bulker shield, draped in the same blue and coloured cloth as the Princess was. 

She was doting on him, setting a light aflame with a wisp of orange from her fingertips. Firebending too. She was still beautiful to Asami even kneeling before her waning father, kissing his forehead. 

“I found these outsiders in the mountain. I think they may be able to help us” the Princess informed him in a hushed tone but Asami could still make it out while the rest of the team were looking around the throne room which looked more like a botanical garden from civilisation, a large pond in the middle of the grand hall with stepping stones in a circular pattern vaguely familiar to Asami’s eyes. She wasn’t looking properly anyway. She was too focused on the Princess, still on the back of her though she wished to see that face once again, to see the sapphire eyes and those beautiful tanned lips and everything else, to never stop looking. The King forced his daughter away with a prolonged hand motion and addressed Zaheer. 

The commander stepped forward and bowed before the King, who was struggling to get up or at least sit up to see his guests. Zaheer gestured to everyone to bow also and they did, Asami still keeping her eyes fixed on the Princess even while she was bowing. The more enticing thing was that the Princess was looking at Asami too, looking at her face and her hair that was now let down and flowing all down her back with that one same thick strand diverting and flowing down the right side of her face, her glasses on the tip her nose again to allow the Princess access to her emerald eyes and deeper, into her head and her thoughts that were consumed by the Princess and the city. Asami could feel her body heat rise as the Princess scanned her up and down and seemed to smile faintly, certainly admiring something. 

“Your Majesty?” Zaheer asked, recovering from his bow and walking forward a little onto one of the stepping stones. The King grunted slowly. “On behalf of my crew,” Zaheer began in his sledgehammer charming way that rubbed Asami the wrong way, “may I say what an honour it is to be welcomed into your city” he told him. It was creepy, a shark attempting to court his food before eating it. It was the exact same in tone and behaviour as how he was before the submarine submerged back on the boat; the bow, the kiss of the hand and everything else. 

The King was hardly as forgiving as she had been, raising his hand again and speaking in a more gruff manner than Zaheer himself. “You presume much,” he started, taking a gap as he breathed heavily. “To think you are welcome in the South” he slammed in Zaheer’s face like a door, more alpha than Zaheer was trying to be. Asami knew however that should he want to the commander would simply have to move his vest and tuck it into his pants and the pistol would be revealed again, showing the King the full intensity of Zaheer’s personality. He was like a storm really compared to the King’s tsunami. Wind against Water.

However Zaheer kept up the pleasantries. “Oh but sir we have come a long way from the surface” he told the King, a sly and devilish smile across his brick like jaw. What’s your game Zaheer? She was still looking at the Princess while the two men did business. 

“I know what you seek, and you will not find it here” the King told them, waving his hand as he edged out the words. He sounded as if he were in pain, the chest being a tinderbox aflame like a roman candle and causing a fire in him that he couldn’t escape. He was frail yes but his figure and his physique of boldness told Asami that he must be in some kind of medical haphazard limbo, especially with his struggling words from his lips. No wonder the Princess doted on him. Her eyes were promising Asami her sweet desires of embrace and more, telling her that she would tend to her every need. “Your journey has been in vain.” Only it was hardly in vain for Asami, she had found the city and that was the dream, everything else, the audience, the Princess and the views were all a bonus for her years of waiting and determination.

Zaheer was having nothing of it. He was still in the running for his prize, his memento of the South and a small part of Asami knew then that it was bound to entail a dirty trick or something of the sort. She trusted his leadership only not his motives. A part of her wished that the King would force them from the city before she could get a chance to see what Zaheer had in mind but then the Princess looked at her again, the gorgeous sapphire eyes again, and Asami couldn't bare the thought of leaving at all. 

“But we are humble explorers, men of science” Zaheer protested, shaking his fist in the air diplomatically. And then the guns were in the King’s eyes as if he’d seen their kind thousands of times. 

He laughed at Zaheer calculatedly. “And yet you carry weapons” he observed, waving his hand towards Zaheer’s belt. that was when Kuvira began to look unpleased.

“Our weapons allow us to remove certain,” he struggled for the word, making sure he chose the correct one for the sake of the meeting going sour and crumbling before him when he knew he could rope the King into making some form of conditions for them to stay. He was a man that could talk anything and what he couldn’t he simply ‘removed’ entirely. “Obstacles in our paths.” He elected for obstacles, emphasising the double edge to his word and stroking his ego again as he enjoyed to so much. 

The King chuckled slightly again, catching the double meaning and seeing through Zaheer’s charm and megalomania as if he were made of dust. “Some obstacles cannot be removed by a mere show of force.” He sounded to Asami as if he were speaking from experience. She always prided herself on being able to see certain things in people, what they had done importantly in their lives or what kind of nature they truly had but the King was so shrouded she could only see the lines on his face and the whites of his eyes, noting deeper at all. The same was with the Princess,she too was a mystery but by far and beautiful one she would gladly devote time to deduce. 

“Return to your people,” the King finally decided, almost yelling so his words hit harder like a hammer to Zaheer’s charming glass facade. “You must leave the South at once” he followed, this time certainly yelling so that Zaheer could feel the sting of his words. 

Asami wasn’t crushed, but the Princess gasped like she was, looking right back into her guest’s emerald eyes once again with the terrified look like she was never going to see her again. To her it was unfair, they had just met and certainly had been a spark in the caves. She wanted to tend to it, to burn some wood on it and kindle a flame between herself and Asami Sato. Now she would not get that chance. 

“Oh your Majesty be reasonable” Zaheer blustered, puffing out his chest almost to charm his way further in the exchange. He stumbled in his mind, thinking of an angle he could try until he stopped on a second stepping stone and looked at the King devilishly again. “May I request that we stay one night?” He asked, hoping he had something to work with there. “That would give us time to rest refuel, be ready to travel back by morning” he calculated before the King, his thoughts taking off from his mental runway as he had it. 

The King scoffed, waving his bear like a hand around. “Fine. One night. That is all” he relented, his words echoing in a bass tone like gravel in Zaheer’s eye. At least now Asami could see some more the city and it’s people. 

They left after Zaheer thanked the King, the Princess looking lost to Asami as they were ushered out of the throne room by the guards. They would see each other again within the hour but she was looking at Asami with eyes of wanting, wanting to talk and to sit and to look at her more than she had done. Like at the camp, like in the cave when they were semi alone and she could study every angle of her face. 

Once the guests were gone the Princess blew a stream of air from her palms, extinguishing the light above her father’s throne and scowled at him disapprovingly. He was giving her the same look already, his eyes hard and judgemental as he lay back down to rest his chest. 

“You have grown soft Korra, your heart has become malleable” he told her but she was hardly listening to him. “A thousand years ago you would have slain the woman on sight.” She knew he knew her, knew that she was looking to Asami Sato during the entire audience. She was the kind of girl Korra liked; fair and beautiful in the face and upper body with hair that would certainly captivate her given that Korra only had the short bob of brunette. He could tell by Asami’s emerald eyes and red lips that Korra would be drawn to her almost and that was almost the entire reason she had brought them all to him, not because of Zaheer. 

Korra turned to her father in a rush, her hair swaying in her water like motion. She was beginning to become annoyed at his close mindedness. “A thousand years ago our people were not scavenging for food on the edge of a crumbling city!” She yelled at him, her pain for her people defiant in her eyes for him to see. Her shoulders were so swamped and bogged down by the lives of her people, almost as much as his were but she believed she had to do something for them, that there was more for them than remaining in the state the City had been cast into for thousands of years. “We were once a proud people now we live in ruin” she huffed, falling to her knees before her father. 

He moved his waning hand onto her shoulder, the other to her soft tanned cheek so he could look her in the eye. “Korra. These outsiders. What they have to teach us. We have already learned” he told her, sounding a little bitter but more understanding and consoling to her. He meant Zaheer, already seeing the man would ‘remove’ anything in his path if if hampered his progress to anything he wanted. Korra was referring to Asami, hoping and believing already that she could help them more than anything. And those eyes of hers. 

“Our way of life is dying.”

“Our way of life is preserved” he countered. “Korra, when you take the throne you will understand” he told her and insisted on his rest. She relit the light above him to make him comfortable and drew his blanket over his chest, snapping some water from the pond into a chalice near him for his gruff throat. She loved him undoubtedly, but she believed he was could not be more wrong. 

Opal jumped them as soon as the four got back to the convoy parked aways from the throne room. Half the mean and woman had remained with the digger at the new entrance to the volcano, readying to hopefully blast their way back to the surface. The rest were present to refit and refuel under Zaheer’s behest. 

“So how’d it go?” Opal asked, hoping for some good news after the night they had all had. 

Asami was already taking some notes about the culture in a small notepad, a pencil etching her observations as she remembered the scenery of the throne room and how the two guards looked, before long she was on another page gently scribbling the contours of the Princess’s face, the sharpness of her chin and the bright sparkles in her eyes. Her eyes. Zaheer could see she was already carefully drawing the intricate lines of the face and an idea struck him and Kuvira simultaneously with an exchange of a glance. 

“Well the King and his daughter don’t exactly see eye to eye” Asami reported out loud, still thinking about the Princess as she carefully smoothed over the lines of her lips in the small notebook, the luscious curves she was already wishing were making sweet contact with her own. “I don’t know I think he’s hiding something” she added, moving onto the main body of her miniature masterpiece in the notebook. Suyin held back an observant giggle once she saw the drawing at another of Zaheer’s glances towards the archaeologist. Anyone who was in the throne room noticed Asami blatantly stare and ogle at the Southern Princess the entire time and it was even more obvious that there was an attraction there already. It was simply psychology and observation, which Zaheer, Kuvira and Suyin all had a grasp of. 

Kuvira was sly and like a fox with her index finger rolling on the bottom of her chin as she looked from Zaheer to the notepad with the doodle of the Princess then back to her commander with one idea in mind. “Someone needs to talk to that girl” she stated, more of a fact directed to the entire group except Asami while she continued to doodle with concentration. 

Instantly Bolin jumped up with his hand raised in the air having remembered the face of the Princess when they were standing on the cliff and how he had felt his stomach flips somewhat when he did. “I will go!” He shouted to the circle. No one noticed him. They all knew he was going and who needed to go. 

“Someone with good people skills” P’Li added, comically stroking her rather sharp chin as if to sell the fact that the group was really thinking about it despite Asami not even noticing and just continuing to doodle. 

Again Bolin was jumping before everyone with his arm raised “I will do it!” He declared.

Suyin could barely contain her laughter. “Someone who won’t scare her away” she said regardless as Bolin was continuing to leap gently off the floor. 

“For the good of the mission, I will go!” 

However Zaheer was already slapping Asami on the shoulder with casual gratitude for her obvious attraction to the brunette and tanned beauty. “Good job Sato, thanks for volunteering” he slithered and walked off with Kuvira and the convoy to ready up for the trip back tomorrow. Suyin was laughing gracefully in a blissful chuckles as Bolin was dramatically in a sulk. 

Opal nudged Asami in the ribs with her sharp elbow like the jabs she delivered to her earlier when the rig failed only this was jokingly and playful not out of dominance. She gave her a slight wink to boot as she and rest of the team left in full to resupply and enjoy the city for their one agreed day. “Go get her tiger” she joked, kissing the air between them playfully and arrogantly. Asami’s glasses had all but come off and her pencil was on the floor from when Zaheer had slapped her on the shoulder. She looked down at her notepad and saw that she had drawn the head and the bust of the Princess smiling at her with a full grin and teeth. Even as graphite on a sheet of lined A5 she looked amazing to Asami and then at that moment she realised what her reward was for finding the city; a chance at adventure with the girl who had saved her in the cave. 

Within ten minutes she was still outside the throne room waiting for the right words to come into her head, the right combination of syllables and vowels and consonants that could at least allow her to not look like a bashful idiot who was so completely infatuated with a woman who was tribal and who had no idea what civilisation looked like. Why am I so stupid? She felt like an idiot in truth and she had since her outburst in the cave. You’re beautiful? What the hell Sato? It was so unorthodox, she was a tribal and a Princess, and the first thing Asami Sato had said to her already was that she found her beautiful. But it wasn’t just that, she found her more than beautiful. To Asami her face and body was splendid, amazing stupefying even and now was her chance to talk with her one on one and learn of the South, of the culture, the history, the Princess. Why was she so closed off to the idea of simply talking to her? Of learning about her, she was a part of the South and now that they had discovered it the location was bound to become public, she could come back and see her again. Or maybe the King would come round. She hoped it wasn’t just wishful thinking as the audience entered her mind again and how the King seemed to hate all of them. But the Princess was different. It was time to found out how different.

She shoved her notebook into her trousers and stuck the small pencil into her vest pocket. She would be lying if she felt the bra was comfortable, and she had been in the same tank top for about three days. Her hair was flowing down her back but felt dirty and her boots were a little destroyed to say the least, hardly the correct attire for interrogation or otherwise wooing. 

“Alright Sato now’s the moment to dive in, grab life by the neck and..” Completely smother it from head to toe in sweet kisses. She couldn’t just help herself, she slapped her own cheek over the faint brush of the stone door being opened; she didn’t hear the light footsteps. “I’ve got some questions for you and I’m not leaving this city until they’re answered” she practicing on the humid air in front of her. Suddenly there was a pair of cool and smooth palms over her glasses, darkening her vision. From the glance she could see they were the tanned digits of a native, hopefully her Princess.

Her breathe was also cool, dry and still soothing as it wrapped around and embraced Asami’s ear under her crimson curls. “I have some questions for you and you’re not leaving this city until they’re answered” she whispered calmly and slower than Asami had blurted out. In her mind it was seductive and lustful in her ear, even if in reality it was the opposite; she hardly cared the action was so out of nowhere and caught her so off guard that it flipped her stomach and pressed against her like a sudden embrace. 

The Princess removed her hands while Asami blushed. “Well,” she began timidly having her stomach still flipped and her body heat rising to the woman’s touch. Before Asami could say anything else the Princess covered her mouth with a hand, the faint smell of some exotic aroma filling Asami’s nostrils and driving her insane. Why is she so perfect? She had still only just met her. 

“Come with me” the Princess ordered her, yanking at her arm as she took her away. 

“Of course” Asami breathed bashfully.

They were at a clearing, an open and faintly wooded area where the blue coloured ice and stone mixture was being claimed by the overgrowth and the vines from the deeper earth. It was so tranquil and serene as the Princess pulled herself up on a wall and just sat while the cool breeze from somewhere seeped in and blue her hair back a short bit. She smiled while taking in the aroma of the flowers growing nearby. Asami sat on the floor near a tree close by to her hostess and pulled out the notebook again and her pencil from the breast pocket; she soon continued her doodle of the Princess, drawing the curves and lines of her hips and lower chest having already carved out her upper bust from memory on their way to the clearing. The Princess sighed again, leaping from the wall and walking around the clearing in her beautifully bare feet. 

She flopped her strong arms around. “There is so much I want to know about your world” she told Asami, looking into her face as she alternated between catching a quick look to the ripped chest and then back to the lines of the paper while she etched out her muse. She paced a little before turning back to Asami and demanding she look back with her loud an booming voice, the prominent grin that made Asami giggle inside returning to her face. “You’re a scholar right?” She asked putting her muscular arms on her perfectly balanced hips. 

“Huh?” Asami was somewhat baffled, looking up from her doodle.

The Princess scoffed a little. “Well by the way you look compared to the others and your large forehead you look like one” she explained. Asami was smiling, quite embarrassed almost that the woman had made her resort to what she was about to do. It hadn’t mattered with the team, they didn’t or shouldn’t have known but she did want to show off a little to the woman in front of her with her six pack and large biceps on full display for Asami to admire, it was only fair she show hers. 

She stood up leaving the pencil and pad on the floor and lifted up her tank top to the bottom of her bust, showing off the outline of a ripped chest from her physical history of martial arts classes her father made her take, the boxing class she’d taken in university and the countless weeks of tinkering her car and others while hunched over or else. She was almost as admirable as the Princess and thus the tanned woman was somewhat stunned. “Like what you see?” Asami asked, completely out of left field and out of her shell on a hunch it may work. It did. The Princess’s sapphire eyes were consumed by the sight of the somewhat glazed over muscles Asami was packing. Now the Princess certainly liked what she saw as Asami had done in the cave and throne room. And it wasn’t like Asami was relaxed, she was still so nervous and thus let of of her tank top and her stomach was covered up again. She was back in her shell right away, sitting down to draw. “Sorry, I just don’t like being assumed to be one thing” she explained. It had been the same with Zaheer and the truck two weeks ago and it was one of the only things that ever got her to be bold, to be rebellious of others’ assumptions of how Asami Sato should behave or look. She was her own person and that was how she liked it. Plus a small part of her felt good about showing herself off to the woman she was so blatantly admiring. 

“What is your country of origin?” The Princess asked, moving on with the image of the rather strong archaeologist being stored in her out-of-time mind for later when the woman had left with the team. Although if she had her way they wouldn’t have to. 

Asami kept doodling, moving on to the slender and simply scrumptious legs of the Princess. “A place called the United Republic, near the Earth Government,” she told, pausing her drawing again and looking back at the Princess, who had now sat down on the floor opposite to her with her bare legs folded. “Although I imagine it was the Earth Kingdom when this place was still up there she deduced and carried on the with curve of her calf in black and white. 

The Princess looked stumped, confused as if Asami was speaking an entirely made up language. “What’s an Earth Kingdom?” She asked, poking her head out to grab Asami’s emerald eyes. 

The archaeologist pushed her glasses up the length of her nose. “You don’t know? Do you know anything about how the world was up top before the calamity?” Asami asked, completely intrigued and so in the dark for the first time on the trip. She closed the notebook with the drawing complete except for the arms of the Princess and leaned in forward, shuffling her whole body closer. “How did all of this even really end up down here?” Asami asked the question she probably should have led with. It was a huge fact that needed to be cleared up for the sakes of the history books. She remembered the day all of it started; her reading her practice speech to the fake heads around her dungeon of an office. It all seemed so long ago, more like a decade to a month but it was coming back to her. She wished it didn’t. She wanted to be pulled back to the here and now, the clearing with the beautiful Southern Princess with the short bob of brunette hair, the sapphire eyes that shone like two stars in the darkest of nights, the small face tattoo of equal colour and her barely clothed body that was muscular and looked as if it needed to be embraced and kissed all over by Asami’s full lips. She pushed the thought of Mr Tarrlok and the rest of the board at the museum to the back of her mind and opened her eyes really again to see the sapphire. 

Her hostess was looking saddened, flat from the past reliving itself in her mind. She could remember it like it was yesterday, like it had been yesterday for the past three thousand years or so, repeating itself to her every night and every day, every sleeping and fleeting second on repeat forever. There was a single flash of light, then people were running and screaming. The City was insane, chaotic while her mother and father led her away. She was just a child, a small child while she was being dragged off by her father with her beautiful and threatened mother was lagging behind. She looked to the sky to see the blinding light and someone being raised to it; a man with an arrow on his bald head. She was stunned as he entered an orb of light. She snapped back, returning to the clearing and to Asami’s emerald eyes that looked so caring and inviting with their swirls or content and sympathy. They the Princess a dozen tales of warm nights by the fire and her sweet embrace that she too yearned to feel. She recalled the events to her. 

“It’s said that the Spirits became jealous of the South,” she began, lowering her head to stare at her hands in her lap. “They sent a great cataclysm and banished our city and people here forever.” She was out of it, in a lucid state between memory and reality, remembering it all in swimming detail as all the images flooded her mind from millennia ago. The next thing she noticed was the warm and glazed texture of a pair of hands gently covering her own. They were Asami’s reaching out to touch, to console. “All I can remember is a bright light in the sky and people running. I remember a man going to the light and then there was a huge wall around me; my mother was trapped on the other side when the--”

Asami leaned in, grabbing the Princess with an embrace like she had been meaning to in the cave. She hugged her with everything she had. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered in the Princess’s ear as she nuzzled in close to make the embrace deeper and more intent. The Princess wouldn’t cry as Asami expected her to. “For what it’s worth I know what it’s like to lose your mother.”

She had never talked about it to anyone, not ever, no nobody. It was such an ugly affair she would never recall the events or anything proceeding about her beloved mother. She never even talked about it with her father, both were too scarred by the experience that had claimed her. Now was the first time she had ever even said anything at all on the subject, but a small part her simply couldn’t keep it in as the woman in her arms had been able to tell about hers. 

They broke off soon thereafter but not before the whole exchange had really touched them both deep down. It was such a touch, such a feeling that stirred in both of them. It was more than what Asami sensed between her and Opal. It was the beginning of deeper meaning, fueled by the attraction they both had. Asami may have been feeling foolish but really, at the forefront of her mind, she wanted so deeply to kiss the woman in front of her without even knowing her name yet. She hushed the voices screaming at her to do it and focused on the conversation. 

“You remember? Like you were there when it all happened?” Asami asked, fitting the Princess’s testimony together and arriving and mental discombobulation. But that was over three thousand years ago at least. It’s impossible? And yet the Princess was nodding before her, the crystal necklace, that Asami could now see was filled with a dash of water, dangling as she nodded. Asami was stunned, confused and yet pleasantly surprised all at the same time, almost scoffing before her hostess. “Well, you’re ah, looking good” she awkwardly complimented, making the woman blush a little and laugh at her own awkwardness. 

The Princess stood up, returning from her sadness simply by the warm conversation with Asami. She was smiling, not gleefully but now almost smugly, the teeth bared grin taking up her smile with an eyebrow raised over the other making her look beautifully goofy. “How did you find us? How do you say it? Arc-ee-olo-jist?” She said pretty phonetically making Asami laugh and stand up herself, pulling the Fisherman’s Account from her satchel and grabbing the notepad and pencil again. 

“It’s ‘Archaeologist’” Asami helped her, stowing away the smaller pad and pencil while flicking to the center pages of the Account. “And let me tell ya, if it weren’t for this book we never would have made it” she told her. The Princess instantly swiped the book from Asami’s hands, staring intensely at the glyphs on the wearing pages. 

“You can read this?” She asked just as intense. Asami was about to confirm but the Princess was already shoving the book in her face and pointing to a center line. “This? Right here you can read this?” She asked again and again.

Asami calmly and simply lowered the book from her face and pushed her glasses up her nose again. “Yes I can read Southern Water Tribe” she confirmed to the Princess.

She wasn’t convinced and gripped at Asami’s arm. “Show me.” In a swift motion she dragged her to the far end of the clearing. There was a stone object with overgrowth around and on top of it. It looked much like an elephant coy, with a gaping mouth and shorter tail with a seat looking like it was carved on the top of the whole thing. As Asami judged the whole thing he could see it resembled aspects of a car and yet a plane and yet something else entirely, like she couldn’t simply decide. 

They both pulled the vines and green from it and looked over the whole thing. There was a series of glyphs and inscriptions around a diamond shaped panel with the edges tapered and a small hole slot above it. The Princess was pacing around the head as Asami inspected the panel. “It’s a vehicle like your boxes on wheels but no matter how hard I try I can’t make it budge” she divulged. Asami was still trying to think of how it could even move without propellers or wheels or even a combustion engine.

She looked even closer to the panel, reading and deciphering the glyphs into basic language. Okay here we go,” she had the first line, then the second and thusly. “Place crystal into slot,”

“I’ve done that” the Princess riddled off still pacing.

“Gently place hand on inscription pad, turn crystal quarter turn to the left,”

“Done those too.”

“While your hand was on the pad?” Asami asked her, looking to see her vacant expression. She was about to say yes, and then stopped and shook her head relenting to her defeat. Asami smiled and held her hand out for the woman to give her her water filled crystal. She placed the blue in her palm and Asami inserted it into the slot, following the steps she had just red and the vehicle whimpered and then roared to life just like a car or biplane. She was suddenly very excited as it began to levitate before the pair. “This is awesome,” Asami cried out. “At this rate I can see the whole city in no time at all.” You rather see the whole of her in no time at all. 

She placed her index on the glowing blue panel and it shot off like a bullet; the Princess pulled her arm back to save her from the rogue flying fish before it collided with the far wall and dug itself into the ground.

Asami laughed, shrugging the whole thing off. “So, who’s hungry?”

They had decided to go climbing next, the large spire in the middle of the city provided the best view imaginable at the top the Princess had told her and thus they we more than enthusiastic to climb the whole tower and gaze upon the whole sprawling civilization from the top, to allow Asami to really see what she’d been dreaming of for most of her life. The Princess was ahead of her, the wind blowing her short bob to the side and making Asami’s crimson curls flow in the air majestically whenever she looked down to talk to her. They were both beautiful. 

The humid moisture on her arms and face was beginning to fade away due to the wind at such a height and Asami was feeling slightly cleaner being up so high. “We’ve never really been properly introduced--”

“That’s because you were too busy looking in the cave” the Princess stopped and cut playfully, smiling her comical teeth baring grin down at Asami and making her laugh. It was such a cocky thing to say but yet it alluded to her being completely okay with it. Since the embrace they had both shared both of them were beginning to melt to the other until they both became the same piece of clay. 

Asami gasped with a smile, stopping herself to admire the grin the Princess was presenting to her. “My name’s Asami. Asami Sato, Phd” she always taped on the Phd even if nobody cared or in this case even knew what it was. 

The Princess stopped again and looked down to Asami. “I’m Korra” she finally told her and carried on the little bit longer and reached the top. She offered Asami an arm and pulled her up gracefully to join her, seeing the sprawling vastness of the city amidst the sensational fog that lightly covered the borders to give the illusion that the city never ended. 

Before Asami knew it or could contain it, she was crying from the sincere happiness and joy of finally being here, and finally being here at the side of the beautiful and warm Princess Korra. The moisture leaked from her eyes and she quickly had her hands at them to wipe it away, Korra noticing and placing her hands on Asami’s biceps to comfort her. “What’s wrong?” She asked as gently as she touched, unexpectedly running her fingers through Asami’s tarnished red tinted locks only for them to blow around the back of her head. Korra had decided she loved Asami’s hair almost the most; the way it was dirty and yet flawless and the deep black and crimson was sweet to admire and so different to anything down there. She loved Asami’s fingers as she pulled Korra’s away from her hair only to allow her to continue once she decided she liked the touch of Korra even more. Again it was bliss like the embrace. 

“My dad used to tell me stories of this place as far back as I can remember,” Asami told her, moving in a little closer to feel the warmth come from Korra’s aura. “I just wish he was here to see this.” It had been the first time she had thought of Hiroshi since they arrived. He would have simply salivated over the view, the culture and especially the hover-fish. In their bubble of sweet feelings and loveliness neither Asami or Korra kept track of what they were doing. Their fingers were acting of their own free will as they tangled and intertwined until the pair were suddenly holding hands as the cool and welcome air brushed past them. Asami loved the touch.

They had had lunch just as the lights above the chasm where the city was died down, transitioning into an artificial night time that could or could not have aligned with the cycle on the surface. It was hard to tell down under the world. The whole team was at the grand table eating the exotic and wild foods and Asami stayed beside Korra the entire time, the whole way through the day walking along the docks and the industry seeing all that there was to see of the Southern Water Tribe. It was like and the North and yet so unlike the North, so different and so polar South. It was a completely different world all around but Asami didn’t even care. She dove head first into the language and the customs and the food and the Princess. She was engrossed wholly and at this point hardly even wanted to leave even if there was a possibility to return. It had been the best day of her life. 

It was close to midnight when Korra finally took her hand again and said they would be going to be one place she really wanted to show Asami; a small oasis near the middle of the city where the fireflies gathered in the dark, where they danced and where the water was still and void, pure and tranquil. Korra was different to how she had been earlier upon their arrival. She was suddenly muted, her eyes not open all the way and the sapphires were slightly darker as the fireflies surrounded them in a cyclone. 

“Korra? Are you okay?” Asami asked her while she sat with her feet in the pool of still water, staring at her reflection as the ripples past through it. Asami joined her, taking off her boots and rolling up her slacks and then sitting right next to her, placing her slender fingers on Korra’s to feel the warmth again. 

The Princess looked at her with wide eyes slightly moist, her deep blue looking past Asami’s emerald eyes and staring deeply into her. She took both of Asami’s hand into her own and gripped them passionately. “I’ve brought you here to ask for your help Asami” Korra revealed, her expression one of almost desperation while the archaeologist was calm and collected, still admiring Korra’s eyes and lips. 

When she spoke her breathe was wet and quiet, husky and hitching already now that they were alone and both exposed. “Anything Korra.” She would do anything for her, anything in the world now that she had met her and the woman had all but seized her lust and heart. 

“There’s a mural here, with writing all around the pictures.”

Asami smiled, scoffing again with pride. She stood and walked back to a slab of stone she saw upon arriving with some glyphs and writing around a strange picture. “Well you came to the right woman. Let’s see what we got here” she said more to herself beginning to depict the glyphs in basic and then relay it back to Korra. She would have continued as well, had she not glanced back to where the woman was sitting to now she her standing up to her knees in the water and removing some of the blue cloth that covered her waistline. She was stunned. “Uh, Korra,” she stammered as she could feel herself growing hot and somewhat weak at the knees. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to look but it was so sudden and she didn’t know why, and Korra was suddenly looking at her so innocently. “What are you doing?”

“You can swim right?” Korra checked, still innocently and tossing the half cloth piece to the shore. She was now standing in cloth that resembled a two piece bikini that made her look even more appealing and edible to Asami.

The archaeologist felt like she’d been hooked and knocked spark out before the gorgeous woman before her. “Oh I swim pretty girl. Pretty good! Pretty good--girl, pretty girl. I swim pretty good” she kept recovering from the blatant flub and exposure of her obvious crush. She couldn’t deny now that she did indeed have a crush on Korra; so fast and it felt so good, especially now. And it was growing as it had done all day.

Korra walked deeper into the water until it was to her lower chest, her bust on prominent display now. “Good. It’s a ways to where we’re going” Korra explained. Asami didn’t care, couldn’t care, would never care with Korra looking the way she did. Asami was suddenly boiling on the inside as she began to remove the rest of her own clothing as if in trance. The tank top was first, leaving the pencil and notebook with the now finished drawing of Korra inside the breast pocket; she would have to swim in her bra and underwear but again she hardly cared seeing Korra was doing much the same. 

Once she was as naked as her guide she felt better, still incredibly nervous to be showing much a stranger the more intricate and private areas of her. Only Korra wasn’t a stranger; she was so much more even after a single day and getting in the pool all Asami was dying to do was leap out into her arms and kiss her unrelentingly. But Korra was still a princess. “You’re talking to the belly flop champion of Camp Sokka three years in a row” she divulged almost proud of it. She was a wild infant. Korra was giving a smile and thus she giggled as she drew closer to her, her legs getting wetter as she walked until she was in up to her lower chest too. It was a little cold to her dread but Korra was still looking at her face. Instinctively the Princess ran her hands through Asami’s luscious crimson hair again and then, even more unexpectedly, ran the the tip of her index finger down the jawline, bringing the archaeologist out in a bright blush. “Why don’t you lead the way?” Asami asked, folding her arms to cover bust sheepishly. Korra smiled again and took a gasp before diving; Asami copied once she was under.

They swam for a while, maneuvering past the rocks and stones in their path until Korra led Asami to a small hole, an air pocket where they could catch a breath. They erupted from the water and both let out the stale air from the surface. “Are you okay?” Korra asked Asami, both their hair washed back and soaking. 

Asami was giggling a little from the ecstasy of the swimming and the cold and semi-naked beauty with her. “Well I didn’t drown” she settled, about to say more but was cut off again by Korra placing her index finger over her lips.

“Good. Follow me” she yelled and disappeared under the water again. She kindled her water crystal and it began to shine a bright and lighter blue amidst the darker seafoam shroud. Asami was under after that and Korra led her to the mural way down under the pressure. 

It was huge, colossal in fact, with pictures sprawling all over of what at first glance looked like the calamity. There was a bright light at the center top with a man inside the white with a glowing arrow on his head. There was then a huge wall of blue around buildings with the southern language glyphs surrounding every line of mosaic art. Asami gestured for Korra to swim near the top with her crystal to light up the words for Asami to translate. She read through most of the segment and what it was saying. A man rose to the sky and became a glowing star with an arrow over him. They took another trip to the air pocket to restock on air and then back down to the mural to read the rest. Korra shone her crystal near the wall, Asami seeing, reading and translating the glyphs that curved around the wall and the buildings. The Spirit of the South. It was just like in the Fisherman’s Account. Her eyes beamed as she looked to Korra under the water with realisation in her eyes. 

They quickly returned to the air pocket. “The Spirit of the South!” Asami exclaimed, purely ecstatic that the book was right and she was right and the power source did exist. Korra was confused, very in fact, pulling a face. “It’s the Spirit of the South!” Asami repeated, eyes beaming. “It’s what the Fisherman was talking about in the Account. It wasn’t a star or the sun it was something else. The man rose up into the air and became something else” she was rambling, Korra gently starting to get what she was saying and understanding it. “You’d think something this important would be in the Account” she concluded. “Unless it’s on the missing page.” It was all such a riddle now. The book had been in the Air Temple for thousands of years or so she believed and the Air Nation would have had it locked away and protected; it was highly unlikely that the page was torn out as a theft. And what even was the Spirit of the South? She was still no closer to finding it at all only that it existed in some capacity and may even still exist. But where? And why? All the more confusing to her. In her thoughtful haze she didn’t see Korra crack a smile. She was giving the same look she had done earlier in the clearing. 

All at once her tanned hands had a grasp of Asami’s wet cheeks and she was pulling her in closer towards her own muscular body still smiling. Asami was gawking, embarrassed and awkward again but this was to a whole new level. It was like a novel or a mover and she knew the scene but could not imagine that it was reality. 

“Korra? What are you doing now?” She asked with another stammer. Korra’s eyes were smoky as she continued to pull them both closer and closer together. Asami didn’t know what she had to do with her hands but Korra did. She moved them to around her waist as an embrace and suddenly they were really close, their chests making contact.

“You talk too much Asami Sato” Korra whispered before drawing closer again. Asami was at Korra’s complete mercy as her lips parted and met those of the Princess’s, warm and full the by far the greatest kiss Asami had ever experienced.


	10. The Legend of Korra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Asami and Korra begin to unravel the long and twisted history of the Southern Tribe they return to the city to find Zaheer and his team waiting for them, with lots and lots of guns

When Asami burst from inside the pond she was tired, exhausted even with the amount of swimming, and kissing the pair had down under the water. The darkness of night was beginning to fade into the neutral light of the fake dawn and the air was a little stale, or maybe it just tasted that way because she had had no sleep for going on twenty four hours straight due to her mishap in the cave. The entire team would be probably still getting in the precious hours of rest before they had to leave; although Asami wasn’t leaving, not yet, she couldn’t with the experience with Korra she’d just been through, she had to stay and he had to tell the team about it.

“Did you have a nice swim?” Telling them wouldn’t take that long; Zaheer was standing over her as she gasped for air, and to her surprised he had his pistol drawn with the smuggest look on his face. 

She looked around, spotting P’Li with a rifle in her hands, Kuvira with a different pistol to Zaheer, then Bolin with a devilish smile on his childlike face and finally Opal, even Opal with a gun in her hands and surrounded by a company of masked crew members that looked ready to raise hell. 

“Hey guys, what’s with all the guns?” She hardly needed to ask. It just only clicked with her at that moment what was going on. She felt like the most idiotic woman on the earth, a scholar among thieves and murderers, which is what she now saw them all as, especially Zaheer, the twisted Robin Hood of the entire group. “I am such an idiot” she cursed in a harsh breath, full of bile towards herself and the stocky bear looming over him with the smug grin that confirmed to her that he had already won. There would be only one reason why he was here, and not just by the pool with the least piece of the puzzle lying underneath, which he was certainly not going to swim for. Why would he? He had a perfectly good archaeologist who had just spent hours deciphering the entire thing for him, like a schmuck. “This is just another treasure hunt for you isn’t it?” She knew his answer, it was so simple and so awful that she had only just figured out what he was and what the entire expedition had been for him. “You’re after the Spirit” she stated again harshly. 

He continued to smile, letting out an arrogant sigh. With a swift pull from his boot he revealed a cloth like piece of ancient parchment. “Oh you mean this?” He asked rhetorically. He was so smug, and of course he had reason to; he had played the young and beautiful archaeologist like a fool violin since the beginning of the entire trip,slowly feeding he what she needed and as soon as Korra took her eye in the throne room he was like a child in a candy shop. He had hit the jackpot. There was no way a woman so attractive to Asami Sato could possibly ruin his plans; and she needed Asami herself. Now she had the information and thus he had what he wanted, all that was left to do was for her to decide if she wanted to be the winner of the little game, or the loser. 

“The Spirit of the South” Asami realised, seeing the same white and blue on the parchment as on the stone mural under the water. It was a kite shaped thing with glyphs all around it and the same man with the arrow on his forehead in the center of it.   
Zaheer stood up, walking around with the parchment still in his stone like fist and waving his pistol around like it was made of plastic and shot rubber bullets. “I would have told you sooner Sato,” he began to lie, Asami certainly not believing anything coming from his mouth anymore. It was still all a game to him. “But it was on a need to know basis and well, now you know.” He smiled and therefore disgusted her, walking back to her in the water and extending an arm to help her out; to join him. “Welcome to the club kid” he smiled again, better to have her on side that force blood out of anyone, although she doubted he didn’t want to. 

She pushed off of the stones, being solitary in the water, waiting for Korra to return and single handedly murder each and every one of them for this. “I’m no mercenary” she scoffed in his face, refusing to lower herself to his level. It was vulgar, disgusting and she was still furious at herself for not seeing it any earlier. She was so fixated on finding the city and then on Korra and how beautiful she was; it had turned to be her complete downfall.

At that moment, Korra gasped her way out from under the water and into the hands of one of Zaheer’s masked lackeys, pulling her by her hair out of the pond. Asami raced to her aid, only for Zaheer himself to restrain her by grabbing her hand while the lackey and the Princess struggled with each other. After a split second, Korra had a huge lump of solid stone from the ground in hovering over her open palm ready to slam onto the man’s head and brutally murder him; and she would have done so too if not for Zaheer shooting the stone with a round form his pistol and distracting the fierce Korra enough for two more soldiers to take hold of her, realising she was beaten by technology. Firearms were nothing next to bending, as much as Asami would like to think differently. 

He released Asami and went right back to his dastardly monologue while pacing, Kuvira taking the position behind the archaeologist and moving her pistol to her left temple.

“I prefer the term, ‘adventure capitalist’,” he began, still his ego remaining large than his entire body at his victory. Asami looked to Korra in the hands of two faceless men and all she was burning to do was shove Kuvira to the side, grab her pistol, shoot the two restraining the woman she was in love with and run away from this nightmare. But she would be dead, they both would, the moment she went for the pistol. “Besides, you’re the one who got us here. You led us right to the treasure chest.” He was still talking, and now holding the Fisherman’s Account he had also stolen from her satchel she left in the dry. 

She looked at him refusing, like a prisoner of war or a captured secret agent. “You don’t know what you’re tampering with Zaheer” she yelled in his face. 

He stopped pacing. “What’s to know? It’s big. It’s shiny and it’s gonna make us all rich.” He really emphasised the last word in his counter argument. Of course he was only in it for the money; people like Zaheer only ever were. 

“But you can’t Zaheer. It’s not a diamond or a battery. It’s their life force,” Asami shouted, finally figuring out the riddle for herself. It was how the city had survived the calamity, how the King and Korra were alive, how everyone was. It wasn’t that there was any mystery or stories were told. It was that Korra and everyone else were literally three or more thousand years old; they had lived the entire gap thanks to the water all around and the crystals and this Spirit of the South wherever it was. “You take this Spirit of the South away and these people will die” she pleaded, genuinely, to the man with the gun. She looked at Korra again and saw a different look in her sapphire eyes; a look of complete admiration and gratitude 

Zaheer looked at the page of the Account, examining the letters and symbols he couldn’t possibly understand. “Well that changes things. Kuvira what do you think?” He asked his second in command who had her slender arms around Asami like a coiled viper. 

She moved her seductive mouth next to Asami’s ear to really let her words cut deep. “Knowing that. I’d say double the price.”

“I was thinking triple” Zaheer developed, looking into Asami’s eyes an seeing the flame beginning to plume inside them. There was no way she’d be on board and he was beginning to realise it. He let out an earthly grunt. “Academics. Never want to get your hands dirty” he stated, reviled and frustrated that negotiations were not going as smoothly and quickly as he anticipated. He made another circle in front of her and waved the pistol around again as if it were nothing, he didn’t care about anything except knowing where the prize money was. 

“Think of it this way. If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum… Why, you’d be left with an empty building” he put to her. Asami grunted again as Kuvira pressed the barrel of the pistol completely to her temple. Korra gasped. “God I hate it when negotiations go sour” he stated, nodding to Kuvira to cock her pistol back and load one into the chamber. 

Korra scrambled. “Tell them Asami!” 

Zaheer smiled, along with Kuvira however Opal and Bolin were both less than impressed in the back, on edge with the two in charge pressing a loaded gun to the poor archaeologist’s head, prepared to actually splatter her brains out all over the stones in case she didn’t give them the information. Of course, Korra had just revealed that she too knew all. Asami sighed.

Grabbing the book and paper Zaheer smiled as he pressed them both into Asami’s face, knowing that her little protest had just been destroyed and that there was absolutely no point in dying for nothing. If she didn’t follow him he’d just shoot her and have Korra tell him. She guessed he had more ways to make a tribal talk. 

“Let’s try this again Sato.”

The doors to the throne room exploded in a fiery blaze with rocks and stones flying everywhere around, the shock troopers marching in first followed by Zaheer, with Asami in his hands and his pistol out and Kuvira, with Korra in hers and pressing her pistol into the back of her neck, just at the tip of her back and collarbone. 

“Drop your weapons! Now!” Kuvira spat into the room, pressing the barrel of her gun deeper into Korra’s skin emphasising the fact that she could, and would annihilate the girl there and then. 

King Tonraq called away the guards as soon as he stood up to see his daughter in the hands of the outsiders, of course furious but completely at their mercy, he wanted not for Korra to join his wife. The guards did as ordered and the rest of Zaheer’s team of masked troopers made their way into and around the throne room in search of something. Zaheer himself made his way directly to the King himself.

“How about it Chief? Where’s the Spirit Chamber?” The King wasn’t even surprised that he overbearing beefcake had found out the legend and resolved the riddle; just by looking at Asami looking completely broken and devastated in the center of the pond he could see that Zaheer was a man who would do anything to get what he wanted, including beating women and taking them hostage. He looked to his daughter in the hands of Kuvira still with her pistol pressed to her spine making her squirm like an animal rather than a person. He could also see Asami looking too and seething in hate, wanting to do something, anything to help her. He could finally see that Asami was, and had fallen in love with his daughter, and thus she felt completely guilty for getting them all in this situation. 

Tonraq rested his aching bones and sat down again, simply refusing, believing it to be complete foolery. “You will destroy yourselves” he stated, looking blind almost. 

Zaheer shrugged, as if to walk away yet the way Asami looked up at him she knew he was just about through with failed cooperation. “Maybe I’m not being clear enough here Chief” he muttered before quickly, as if like lightning, whipping the pistol around and firing right on the King. 

Asami, Korra, Suyin and Opal gasped as they looked up at the throne, seeing the King fall from his chair and down to the ground, on his knees before Zaheer with a small, nine millimeter hole in his lower abdomen, blood dripping from it as he coughed and wheezed along the floor while Zaheer took his place in the chair. 

Suyin raced to the King, helping him up and moving him to the side with pressure on the wound, cursing under her breath. “This wasn’t part of anything Zaheer” she spat at him, angered and completely against him now. 

“Put a bandage on that bleeding heart of yours Su, it doesn’t suit you” he countered, less bitter and more of a spiteful jab at her mothering nature. He crossed his legs and turned his pistol at Korra, thus signalling Kuvira to do the same. “Well it look as though diplomacy has failed up Miss Sato,” he slithered at Asami as she came up closer to the steps looking through the pages of the Fisherman’s Account for anything she could have missed, feeling the pressure with two pistols aimed at Korra. “So you’ve got until ten to tell me where the spirit chamber is” he put to her, cocking his pistol. 

“But I told you. The Spirit of the South, lies in the eyes of her Chief” Asami told him frantically. He ignored her.

“One… Two…”

Still nothing new as Asami looked through the Account and the added page to find absolute zilch. Zaheer looked at her nervous and shaking body, seeing the flame in her eyes to have turned to a nervous white fear and the sweat budding at her fingers. He looked at the symbol on the front cover of the book, then to the pool and the swirling water and stones. They looked similar.

“Nine.”

They looked very similar, almost exactly alike. He leaned forward and looked again back and forth. It was the same pattern. “Spirits” he breathed, lowering his pistol gradually and walking to Asami, grabbing the book from her hands an signalling Kuvira to lower her own firearm. 

He look from the front of the book to the floor and too the book again. “The Spirit of the South lies in the eyes of her Chief” he repeated; the riddle had opened itself before him. From where Tonraq was sitting, he would be the only one in the whole of the South to spot that the pattern on the face of the book and the pattern the stepping stones had formed were the exact same, the same spiral swirl. He made his way into the water, gesturing for Kuvira to join him in the center with Korra. Looking back he did the same with his gun to tell Asami to do the same. “We’re in” he stated joyously as they all went into the center. Asami said nothing. 

“You people have no idea what you’re dealing with” Korra stated resistively in Kuvira grasp. The seductive and terribly dangerous viper smiled.

“True, but I can think of a few Nations that would pay anything to find out” she stated. She was hardly wrong Asami thought. With that kind of power any one of them could easily start a new Hundred Year War and simply annihilate the rest, or create a sprawling empire, or worse. 

As soon as Zaheer’s ape like foot stepped into the middle of the pond a large and circular cross section of the earth below jerked and rattled, suddenly sinking through the floor and taking the four of them with it, down into the depths of the City of the South. 

The cavern itself was dark and damp, completely under the water and earth and dried lava that had solidified on the surface to form the plateau. Looking around Asami could see almost no light, save one as the long and cylindrical pillar brought her and the party down to the base of of the cavern. There was a large, white and blue tinted wisp high in the rafters surrounded by large stones with faces on them. Quickly as she could Asami scanned them while they continued to circle around the white fleeting light inside the circle. 

She could see that one of the stones was a face, a man’s as she guessed with a rather butch and wolf like aesthetic that made him seem certainly Water Tribe, although more ancient Northern from pictures the young scholar had viewed in university. Next there came an earthen looking face and from the lines that were analogous to cheekbones Asami again presumed it was a woman. Then to follow her came another man, an elderly one from the way his eyes had been etched into the stone and then the same man with the arrow on his forehead, and the arrow had been carved into the stone. There were more, two or three but they were too ambiguous for Asami to determine if they were men or women. What do they mean? It was all so confusing. She looked over at Korra and saw how the girl’s sapphire eyes were filled with an awe and also a state of understanding. It seemed to strike a bell with her somewhere in her old and yet still beautiful body. Asami took a single step towards her, to hopefully take her in her arms now that Kuvira had eased off; Zaheer held her back with a firm grip on her arm that made her want to cry. 

The pillar fully retracted into the ground and the four of them were free to step off and marvel at the floating wonder that was, as Asami could guess, the Spirit of the South. It was impossible and wondrous to Asami as she stepped forward to get another, closer look as to what was inside of it; she still could not make out what it was but she could take a well educated guess. It was white and by the look of it as the stones circled it Asami could vaguely make out the same kite shape as on the missing page Zaheer had handed her. 

It was a Spirit.

“Alright let’s hurry this up,” Kuvira complained, walking completely away from Korra and taking Zaheer’s notice, allowing Asami to sneak in and wrap her arms around Korra in a warm and extremely concerned embrace.

Her voice was choked, strained because she was trying to hold back her tears. She may not have looked it but she was absolutely terrified, not because of the guns or because of how desperate Zaheer was looking, but because she was in an environment where she knew absolutely nothing; and with Zaheer at the wheel of the situation, it may just get herself and Korra killed. “I’m so sorry Korra” she edged out into Korra’s shoulder. She expected the tribal Princess to slap her, stab her, hate her but pulling away she could see tears in her sapphire eyes too. 

She looked at Asami with her jewels of eyes, glistening with the sparkle of tears and a smile on her face. “Asami,” she whispered, almost sobbing. “You found her.”

“Found who?” Asami asked, drying her eyes concerned and confused. Who? The Spirit?

Korra brought Asami in for another, long and drawn out kiss amidst the archaeologist’s confusion and the Princess’s awe. It was sweet and soft, Korra’s full lips taking the archaeologist away and to safety but there was something else, something scary about it. It felt as if this would be the last kiss they would ever share. Like Korra was about to disappear, or worse. It felt like a goodbye. It felt like Korra was about to die.

“You found Raava.”

Without another word Korra walked away from Asami, leaving her as the archaeologist tried to hold onto her hand, like she was possessed, walking to the base of the Spirit chandelier. She walked past Zaheer and Kuvira as they were talking about something that Asami didn’t care for and if she did she would still be disgusted that they were thinking about doing it. She tried to run after Korra, to catch her and stop her, to bring her in for another embrace and hold her tightly, to love her as she knew she did even after a day; she didn’t care anymore. 

Zaheer grabbed her by the arm again, the same firm, and no doubt wife beating hand if he ever had one that was surely going to bring a bruise to her bicep the amount of time he was clutching at it today. She was forced to simply watch as Korra, miraculously, as if some form of messiah, walked across the water without stepping into it. She actually walked on the water. “Hold your horses lovergirl” Asami heard Zaheer mock with a laughing breath while she watched the beautiful Korra walk across the water completely ignoring her. It brought her to tears. 

“K..Korra” she cried into the silent cavern and yet the Princess ignored her still, making her way toward the Spirit. “Korra… Please?” Asami cried again. Again the Southern Princess ignored her as she reached the spot underneath the Spirit and turned around to face the three still at the shore. Her eyes were suddenly glowing and hot white and she looked as if she was not there anymore, like something else was inside her. “K..Korra?” Asami asked the woman under the floating stone circlet. 

When she spoke her voice was ethereal, angelic and with such an echo coming from her lungs it assured Asami that it was certainly not Korra who was speaking. “You have done well Asami Sato. I thank you” the strange voice spoke. 

Again like an angel, Korra began to float, a small cyclone of airbending under her feet to make her rise up and glide into the center of the stone circle. In a single fluid motion, she was completely encompassed by the stones with faces, becoming one with the white kite light inside. Once inside, the rotating circle of stones began to pick up speed, getting faster and faster until suddenly slowing as rapidly as it began to pick up speed. 

She began to glide down again to touch the water with a glowing blue tribal pattern on her chest; the white Spirit inside the circle was gone, inside Korra with the glowing blue pattern over her and the hot white eyes. 

She was loaded in the shipping bell and loaded on the truck before the what Asami could guess was ten in the morning. The entire team was silent, gruff and full of spite. She knew, and they all knew, that this was wrong; it would be killing the entire civilisation. Suyin would never stand for it; she was still in the throne room making sure the King was comfortable while he was entering his final moments. 

“So this is how it ends. You’re wiping out an entire civilisation. But hey, you’ll be rich” she spat at the team, not Zaheer or Kuvira, she didn’t care about them at all; it was all aimed at P’Li, Bolin and above all Opal, who she thought was the best friend she made on this trip. She could tell that the young engineer was being torn up inside over it, over essentially abandoning her mother and friend, but it wasn’t for money, it was because she was scared of what would happen if she stayed. “Congratulations Opal. It looks like you’ll be able to help your dad with the housing project after all” Asami jabbed Opal’s way.

“And P’Li, it looks like you and your family can open up a whole range of flower shops,” she spat towards the demolitions expert as she was getting into the truck with Opal. “But that’s what it’s all about. Money.”

Zaheer hopped from his truck with a look. “Get off your soapbox Sato” he grunted, walking towards her rather menacingly. Kuvira shouted to him from the truck with the container on it, inside was Korra in some kind of hibernation with the spirit inside her. Raava. She remembered. “Now I know I forgot something,” he said to himself, closing all of the gap. “I got the cargo, the girl, the crew and, what else?” He asked himself, the most smug anyone had ever seen him. “Oh yeah.”

He turned around swiftly, the force of his backhand moving with him in a forceful blast, striking Asami full throttle against her cheek, taking her from her standing posture to the floor, a crimson red mark forming on her cheek. Her glasses fell from her face when he struck her, falling to the floor with a small framed photograph of an infant Asami Sato with a broad and striking Hiroshi Sato. 

Zaheer stepped on the frame, destroying the glass covering it and puncturing the parchment of the photograph, ruining it. He clasped the glasses and wiped them with his vest like a gentleman, rubbing the most painful kind of salt in Asami’s emotional wound. “Look at it this way Sato. You’re the woman who found the South and now…” He dropped the cleaned glasses back on the floor, luckily not destroying them as well as the picture, to which Asami was now sopping over. It was the only real photograph of her father and her that she had left, and it was now destroyed. “Well, now you’re part of the exhibit.”

He walked back to the trucks, rolling two fingers in the air, giving Kuvira the signal to get the convoy up and running to leave with their boon. “Alright people move it.”

Opal couldn’t. She just could not do it. She slammed her palms on the rubber of the steering wheel in her frustration. Asami was right, all the time she had been right and seeing the brute that Zaheer was first hand, the engineer knew she could not be any part of it. 

She left the truck, making her way straight to Asami to help her up and rub her finger along her cheek apologetically and saddened. She gathered up the photograph and handed the picture to the archaeologist. P’Li followed, then Bolin, the Bumi and Mrs Beifong from behind, who was already staying with her daughter. “We’re all gonna die.”

Zaheer launched himself from his truck, shocked and yet still arrogant. “Give me a break. We’re so close to our biggest payday ever and you all choose now to grow a conscience?” He asked the crew, he didn’t need to hear their response, he was already running behind schedule. “Fine, more for me” he jabbed with bile and got back in with Kuvira; the convoy finally leaped into action and slowly meandered back down the bridge to the volcano, taking Korra, Raava and the life force of the entire Southern Water Tribe with them.


	11. The Legend of Aang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Korra gone and Zaheer looking to return to the surface with the most advanced source known to man, Asami now comforts Tonraq in his final moments, during which he divulges the legend behind the man with the arrow tattoo

It was over, the bridge was destroyed, blown up in a spectacular fiery explosion as soon as Zaheer, and the cargo was on the other side and safely away. They were stranded and therefore dying due to Raava, and Korra, being in his ape like hands and Asami still blamed herself; she blamed herself even more as she entered the throne room again at Suyin’s behest. She remembered in all of it, Tonraq had a hole in his lower abdomen from the gun. She sprinted to the throne where she had set him up with a fluid bag and a dose of morphine just to keep the pain from overwhelming him; he was peacefully high yet certainly cognitive. 

She reached Suyin and placed her limp hand on the matriarch’s shoulder. She had done her best but without a hospital or the medical equipment she needed, the King was leaving this world more by each passing second. 

“How’s he doing?” Asami asked, guilty and concerned however she knew the diagnosis and knew it was only a matter of time now until he was gone just like his daughter; she felt like it was all her fault for leading the wolves to his doors. Suyin looked at Asami with tears in her eyes. She had had patients die on her before, it came with the responsibility of being a medic after a doctor but the King was just getting to her, how she knew how to save him but was completely helpless to do so. 

“There’s no use Asami. There’s internal bleeding in there and he’s too far gone” she reported, biting back the tears in her eyes. Asami brought her in for a hug and patted her back. She was trying her best to make her feel less of a complete failure. Suyin saw her family at the doors and ran to join them for more consolation while Asami took a knee before the King. 

He tried to move slowly, seeing Asami come near him and he coughed, a small splatter of red coming to his lips. He could hardly edge out the words but he was determined to say what he had to say, he knew he was dying and there was not much time left at all. 

“Where’s my daughter?” He wheezed before Asami as she took to the floor in a bow, suddenly beaten and overcome by the guilt. Tears began to form in her eyes. How could she tell him? How could she tell the King that because of her, his daughter and the Spirit Raava that was keeping the entire city alive was heading to the surface in the clutches of a madman? 

“Sh… She’s” the tears were too much. Asami broke down before him, the droplets of salty solution falling to the humid stone floor while Tonraq continued to cough before her. He knew what she was trying to say. 

He took a long breath, filling his dying body enough to get the story out; it would be his least act and he needed to get it out now before it was too late. It would be the only way he could help in saving his only daughter. 

“She has been chosen,” he coughed, taking Asami’s attention while she tried wiping her eyes. He took her gentle and young hand in between his wrinkled and aged palms. “Like Avatar Aang before her.”

Spirits. The Avatar! Asami couldn’t believe it. She could and she couldn’t all at once. It all made sense; that’s how she could bend all of the elements while the rest of the Southerners could only bend water. Legends older than the city told of the deity the Avatar was. A being chosen by divinity to be able to utilise all four elements at once. He was said to be a god. Asami suddenly knew everything, the whole nine yards; how Korra could bend everything, how she thought of it as nothing, how the man she saw was the previous Avatar and why she had to be one to carry Raava inside her. 

“She doesn’t know she’s the Avatar does she sir?”

Tonraq shook his head, tears coming from his near blind eyes. “I could never tell her, not while our city was on the verge of fading away. She would attempt to reach the surface if she knew the power she could possess” he confessed, a layer of something in his throat as he began to weep to the young archaeologist. 

“It was three thousand years ago, at the time of the great flood when Raava least chose the Avatar to sacrifice himself to save the city. It was Avatar Aang, an airbender who was visiting from the temples; the spirit herself always remained here, perhaps that was why the rest of the spirits saw fit to annihilate our great empire. 

“In times of great danger, Raava would always call the Avatar to her, to join with her in an effort to protect her. In our time she felt threatened of the world… And threatened of myself” he told her, drawing more fleeting and harsh breaths. He was definitely dying and he knew it more and more as he told the story. 

Asami was no longer crying, but holding on to Tonraq’s withered hands endearingly, making sure he was comfortable. “So you mean, Raava controls the Avatar? The Legend always said that the two were a team” Asami countered, confused and betrayed by history. It was a telltale sign that the age was so different down in the city. 

Tonraq drew in another husky breath. “Raava thrives off of the emotion of all of those around her. Feelings of darkness only neuters and disrupts her. That’s why the spirits destroyed the South; because of me. I didn’t fully understand Raava as a being.” He held off, shame and self loathing coming to surround the old man as he began to weep again. “In my arrogance, I intended to use Raava as a weapon against our brothers in the North, against my brother Unalaq.”

She could really see it in the expression of his face; Tonraq was truly ashamed of his actions. Not only had they cost the lives of so many he couldn’t know thousands of years ago, but now it was costing him the least of his family. 

“That’s why you hid it under the city after the calamity,” Asami figured out. “You wanted to prevent anyone else from abusing her” she deduced, clutching at his hand as he wheezed. 

He took another precious breath, keeping the tears at bay and himself composed. “And to ensure that Korra never suffered as Aang suffered… Or my beloved wife Senna.” He looked pained, heartbroken at the mention of his wife’s name and then Asami remembered Korra recalling the tale. She had been left outside the city as Avatar Aang saved the rest; both Korra and Tonraq had to watch as she died with those who didn’t make it. 

Now Asami was wondering something else. What actually happened the Avatar Aang after he saved the South and after Raava was finished with him. The way Korra and everyone else was talking about the man with the arrow tattoos made her think he just died, maybe there was more to it. 

“What happened the Aang sir?” She was suddenly worried, her breaths beginning to tremble. She dared to think about what was going to happen to Korra. It had only been a day and yet she knew her life would never be the same again without the southern beauty. “What’s going to happen to Korra?” She asked him, shuffling a little on her knees and trying not to cry with tightening her grip on his skeletal hands; they were growing very cold. 

“If she remains bonded to Raava for long enough she will be forever lost to her, just as Aang was.” The words were so definite and final, and as Asami thought about it, it was sounding more for sure with her in the hands of Zaheer and on her way to the surface to ruin the world. Tonraq moved his hands from Asami’s and took the string of the crystal around his neck, sealing his fate by handing it to the woman kneeling before him. 

He gave her the crystal, both of them looking closely into the swirl of the luminous water inside it. “The love of my daughter, is the only thing I have left. My burden would have fallen to her,” he coughed and wheezed, feeling the cold chill wash over him like a cruel wave. He placed the crystal into her smooth palms and closed her fingers over it with his hand. “But now it falls to you Asami Sato.

“Rescue and return Raava. Save the South,” he took his final breath. “Save my daughter.” 

Asami looked into his eyes as they closed for the final time and he exhaled the life out of himself. The King was dead. 

The guards bowed before him as Asami wiped her tears from her eyes and looked into the water of the crystal. She had an idea but she was wary; doubting if it could even be done. She had to do something, anything to stop Zaheer and now, she had the least wish of the King on her shoulders. She was not going to sit around and wait to die, even if it meant charging to her death. 

Alright Sato, make your damn choice. 

Suyin was back up collecting her bag and tools, her tears cried already now she was looking at how Asami was thinking. She knew exactly what the young woman was thinking and she was already on board but she could see the conflict in her eyes passed her dirty glasses. 

“So what’s it gonna be Sato?” 

Asami popped back into reality from her state of limbo to see Suyin’s lime green eyes looking at her compassionately. She didn’t want to do it, she didn’t want Suyin or Opal or anyone else to go with her either. She hummed in retort, looking absent still as the doctor stood over her with the bag in her hand. 

She smiled, gesturing to the door and the throne as the guards saw to their King. “I followed you in. I’ll follow you out” Suyin stated, simply and plump with her mothering smile. “It’s your decision sweetie.” Why does she have to be so nice?

The strings snapped, she wanted to rip her head off because of how nice she was being even though Asami was feeling so terribly about herself. She picked up the Account from the floor and tucked the crystal into her slacks pocket briefly to wipe her filthy glasses on her equally filthy tank top, raggedy and stretched from all the stress; she had been wearing it for the best part of four days now and it was beginning to stink a little. 

“Oh really my decision? Well, I think we’ve seen how effective my decisions have been,” she began with a certain brand of self hating bile in her tones. “Let’s recap;

“I lead a band of plundering vandals to the greatest archaeological find of all time, thus enabling the kidnap and/or murder of the royal family and not to mention personally delivering the most powerful power and weapon source known to man into the hands of mercenary nutcase who’s probably going to sell it to the Fire Lord!” Asami yelled at her, her glasses trying to escape from her face as she grimaced and made her mouth almost three times larger than normal, her face so animated in her self directed anger. She glared at Suyin intensely. “Have I left anything out?!”

She cocked her head to the side, thinking for a split second without laughing at how over exaggerated Asami was making herself. “Well you did set the camp on fire and dropped us down that big hole.”

“Thank you!” Asami sighed, exhaling absolutely everything from her bones and starting to walk out the throne room. “Thank you very much” she breathed, somewhat defeated but beginning to relent. 

Su shot her a compassionate glance with her matriarchal smile and an apologetic hand on Asami’s flat shoulder. “Of course, in my experience, when you hit rock bottom, the only way left to go is up” she told her before walking ahead to join her mother and daughter. 

Asami had made her decision. 

“Who told you that Suyin?” She asked, forcing the doctor to look back with eyes of care. 

Suyin smiled and looked up, knowing what Asami was about to do and she was with her the entire way, like a soldier with her commander into battle. “A fellow by the name of Hiroshi Sato.”

Asami stormed off through the large doors and into the courtyard, knowing exactly where she would need to go; the place in the clearing where Korra took her yesterday near the large tree with the walls covered in the overgrowth. It was the only plan she had and it was reckless and idiotic, surely to result in her sacrificing herself for nothing, but it was the only thing she could do to even remotely change things. She was going to take a vehicle, one of the flying machines, into the volcano and steal back Korra before it was too late; how she would separate her from Raava was something that hadn’t crossed her mind yet. 

Opal was walking with her, concerned at how angered and yet determined Asami was with both her fists clenched the tightest she had ever formed a fist. She looked like a true friend, fully back from her cloud of selfishness that had controlled her before. P’Li and Bolin were back too, model teammates and comrades now, a true team. 

“What are you going to do?” Opal asked her as the group reached the courtyard, a crowd of Southern men and woman gathering around because word was already spreading about the King and what he had instructed Asami to do. 

Her teeth were mildly gritted and she was tense all over. “I’m going after Zaheer” she stated, reaching one of the fish themed hovercraft and wiping the overgrowth from the control panel. “And I’m not saying it’s the smart thing to do, but it is the right thing to do” she told Opal who was about to make her stay. 

She inserted the crystal into the slot and saw the crowd of southerners and the rest of the group observe as she made the flying fish spring to life. She got into the cockpit of the tuna styled fish and hovered over the crowd. 

“Half-turn right, quarter-turn back and keep your hands on the control panel” she dictated to the crowd and they all leaped into action, everyone finding a vehicle and operating them into life with the team all commandeering their own. P’Li took a lumpy and study fish while Opal piled into another tuna styled with her mother. Bumi had his shotgun out and hoisted Mrs Beifong onto one with him, her withered hands holding a camera although Asami had no idea how she could what she would be snapping. 

“Saddle up partners, someone get me some jerky and ammo” he called to one of the southerners. 

Bolin was straddling a larger fish and getting the same brand of giddy as he was upon entering the city yesterday. “I’m so excited” she heard him breathe again. 

She raised her fist as her legion of attack fish hovered into the air gathering in attack formation like a fighter squadron. This was going to be tough and people were probably going to die; possibly her included. She had to though. To save the South and above all to save Princess Korra. 

“Alright! This is it. We’re going to rescue the Princess. We’re going to save the South, or we’re going to die trying, now let’s do it!” She roared into the sky before pulling forward on the controls and leading the charge of fish away from the city and across the lava moat towards the volcano, and towards Zaheer. 

The lackeys pulled the trigger on the massive canon in the base of the volcano, launching a huge blast of flame upwards and into the rafters of the mountain. The top was blown away and revealed a spotlight onto the madman with the massive gun, standing over his operation with the biggest grin on his face. He held out his hands and breathed in a healthy breath of victory. 

“I love it when I win.”


	12. The Volcano, She Awakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Zaheer makes his attempt to reach the surface with Raava and Korra in his grip Asami leads a large effort to stop him with the team and the Southerners. Her plan is basic but effective but what she doesn't know is that Zaheer is never surprised when he's got a lot of guns

The attack wing soared into the cave leading straight to the bowels of the volcano with such swiftness even fighter pilots would be envious of; Asami pulling and holding a determined face the entire time with her eyes focused on the light emanating from the end of the tunnel where Zaheer would be lingering, readying his escape to the surface. In many ways they were a fighter squadron now, their target being the damsel in distress who Asami could not resist thinking about as the cave descended into complete darkness save for the blue ice cold patterns glowing from the heads and mouths of the flying wing of fish, both tuna style and haddock as Bolin had pointed out. If the young and weary archaeologist said she wasn’t completely terrified she’d be telling the biggest lie of her life and in complete honesty she still wasn’t sure that it was the smartest idea she could have had but she was mid way through her hunch and she had the rest of her rag tag team behind her with more and more ranks of southerners on fish filing in as the cave began to expand wider and wider until they could see light again faintly at the end of the tunnel. ‘Asami if you’ve ever had time to think about regrets now’s the time girl. No? Good.’ She thought of her father, what he would say and then realised if he had said anything at all she would just be ignoring it completely to stop a madman hellbent on getting rich even if it meant killing innocents and to rescue a woman she had only known just over a day and who she loved regardless. It was as if the spirits had divinely intervened in some way she could not figure out, forcing her to act as she had never acted in her life. It was reckless and she didn’t care. 

Zaheer had the capsule carrying his southern prize attached and suspended in the air by the large dirigible coloured red and hazardous with four side inflatables to allow it to float slowly up the shaft of the volcano with himself and his right hand lady safely on the observation deck. He still had the large gun that could for all intensive purposes have been a portable anti aircraft gun. He was already ascending and had the biggest grin on his face that victory was so closely in his grasp. As a defiant and least effort to stroke his large ego he pulled in the sweaty and muscular woman at his side in for a long and abusive kiss, forcing his tongue into her mouth that in many ways wound her up and disgusted her all at once. It was pure adrenaline coursing through both of them, but mainly him, allowing him to get off on his score. He purely was a man of filth. 

Asami finalised her plan of attack in her head and turned to the gang; P’Li and the Beifongs coming up right behind her in attack formation. They were all looking on edge, especially Opal who was, as Asami only now remembered, the youngest out of all them at just twenty; and now she was following Asami who was only five years her senior into battle. 

“Okay guys here’s the plan,” she called to them with the wind blowing her crimson highlighted hair back passed her face. She was amazed Opal’s engineer's cap was staying on. Even more so looking to spot Bumi’s bowler hat staying on his head as loosely as it always was; he looked both menacing and laughable with his double barrelled shotgun in the one hand. “We’re going to go in fast and low and hit them by surprise.” It sounded much more tactical in her mind, as well as the best course of action but once the words left her lips she could tell they were fairly predictable. They were fighting in a rather small and confined space that was also a volcano, leaving them very little option to attack from above. Also as far as Asami knew the damn fish had no weapons to speak of and she didn’t even have a pistol; the only weapons the wing had at all were the primal’s bows, arrows and spears. Opal had a handgun she’d stowed away from her mother rebelliously. Bumi of course had his shotgun and Mrs Beifong had her camera, although Asami doubted that technically counted as a weapon. P’Li had what was left of her explosives stockpiled which now counted at about three sticks of dynamites and half a dozen road flares and then Suyin had her medical bag and hacksaw which, as the words had stuck with the archaeologist the entire trip, could ‘cut through a femur in twenty eight seconds’ but Suyin was sure she could also ‘cut that time in half’. 

“I gotta warn ya Asami, Zaheer’s never surprised when he has a lot of guns” Opal countered. Then it dawned on Asami that Zaheer did have a lot of guns. She remembered all the men he had not to mention the rigs that were left standing after two days ago and then the contents of the trucks and then all the guns she saw on the sub. Her heart sank and she felt sick but she was so done with melodrama it only fueled her determination. There truly was no turning back now and carrying on was better than sitting around and waiting to die. She had to do something.

She slammed her palms on the stone dashboard of the impossible vehicle being careful not to his the control panel and then wiped her hair back with sweat already forming on her brow. “Great, you got any suggestions?!” She called back completely fed up the the day she was having. She was already exhausted. 

“Yeah!” She heard P’Li call from the side. “Don’t. Get. Shot!” She yelled sarcastically with her three eyes practically popping out of her skull. 

They cleared the large hail of stalactites and came into the bowels of the volcano as the dirigible cleared the floor with Zaheer standing proud on the deck. She eyes him straight away in the gleam of her lenses. He had lit up the entire arena with spotlights to make it feel like a show. 

“There they are!” She called, pointing at the madman while the rest of his operation leaped to life and got to battle stations; they manned the stationary machine gun turrets and all grabbed rifles. some even manning one manned stunt planes with built in weaponry, which completely stunned Asami already. 

Before anyone could alter the plan the base of the volcano turned into a warzone with flying fish and smaller one manned planes soaring through the small space of the volcano with machines letting rip and bullets flying through the air. The primal southerners fought back with hurls of arrows from their wooden bows, managing to rip through the cloth coverings of the enemy soldiers in gas masks and long trench coats but doing nothing the gatling gun batteries or the massive anti aircraft encampments. Asami wondered why the hell Zaheer had seen fit to bring all of this destructive equipment but then she remembered that now he had shown his true colours he was a desperate man who would take every step to ensure he got his prize and therefore his cash. Everything that was not money meant nothing to him and once he had his prize only his escape was a priority. 

Now the men below had set up mortar tubes and were hurling explosive shells high into the air. She could only dodge and weave through the hailfire of them and watch as the occasional unlucky pilot flew into one of them and crash landed on the odd truck or a group of Zaheer’s men and women, taking them with him or her. 

“Holy shit!” She cursed, forming up with Suyin and Opal as the matriarch flew carefully and cautiously through the barrage of death with their tuna with no guns. She begged the question had she flown before? Asami thought for a split second and came up with the conclusion that she would never know the full story behind any of her teammates, least of all for the secretive and yet still attractive Kuvira; Asami couldn’t help but think the woman was still smoking, even if she was only interested in money. Once the archaeologist decided she liked the look of someone that was that, no matter how much she hated them. “You told me he only had guns!” Asami shouted to Opal after dodging another mortar shell. 

The engineer was shaking her head in the distance as her mother began to squirm as she weaved through the damage zone. “What I said was he’s never surprised!” She called through the air through her thick lips.

One lucky man on a gatling gun encampment found the main attack wave of flying fish and the helm was P’Li when he began to fire. He found her fast through the recoil and peppered at her haddock vehicle, trying to shoot her right off in order to kill her. She squirmed, even she was terrified when being shot at fifty times in a few seconds. She couldn’t control her reflexes as her hand landed on the control panel of the fish in a certain way, finding the main and only weapon systems as she closed her eyes and flew right over the gunner trying her best not to die in any of the plethora of ways possible. 

The mouth glowed a spectacular and fatal blue before charging up and firing and massive spike of electrical energy that arced over the earth and magma before finding its way to the truck, blasting right through the radiator and blowing it up with the three gunners along with it. P’Li smiled as the bullets stopped and she turned to the two southerners forming up on her wings. She chuckled. “Okay, now things are getting good” she muttered to her wingmates at the sudden release of seeing something other than stone fish blow up in a flurry of orange and white and blue. She was such a pyromaniac at heart and now she could satisfy herself with the new toy. 

Asami flew up on her wing as the two southerners soared on ahead to attack the gunning trucks. The young and yet exhilarated archaeologist was completely disheveled but still in fighting shape with the adrenaline and bodily chems coursing through her veins. “P’Li, heads up!” She called from across the way to grab the anarchist’s attention. Suyin and Opal came up behind both of them and together they set their sights on the large red dirigible in the center of the arena which was still slowly heading upwards with Korra hovering the capsule at the bottom. “You and me we’re gonna be decoys,” she turned to Su and her daughter as P’Li nodded briskly and flew on ahead at Zaheer, figuring out what Asami was getting at. “Opal, Suyin, fly up underneath the thing, and cut our girl loose” Asami instructed and looked back at the red. 

“You got it!” Suyin shouted and deviated from her course, heading to the bottom of the spinning blades right where Korra was contained. 

P’Li formed with Bumi as the planes began to clean up the rest of the southerners with Bolin doing his best to guard them in a mad frenzy of energy blasts from the mouth of his fish. Bumi suddenly became an expert marksman, shooting two pilots dead from their planes while Mrs Beifong took snapshots of random areas in her blindness. No matter how she could see before surely there was too much sound and noise for her to figure out where anything was now. She did however help Bumi reload as P’Li charges head first through an exploding plane she shot ten seconds prior. She racked up another two demolitions in as many minutes while Su and Opal approached the bottom of Zaheer’s balloon relatively undetected; Asami drew the rest of the fire from the man with the massive gun as Kuvira shot seemingly aimlessly with her smaller magnum.

Disembarking from their fish Suyin handed her daughter the hacksaw to cut at the chains, knowing she could certainly cut faster and stronger than her mother being the engineer that she was. 

“You told me this thing could cut through a femur in twenty eight seconds!” Opal yelled as she cut and cut at the chains to no fruition. She had no idea what they were made out of but the saw was not cutting through the metal at all and they were rapidly running out of time Asami and P’Li could maintain Kuvira and Zaheer. 

“Less talk more saw!” Suyin roared quickly, encouraging Opal to cut for her damn life, for everyone’s damn lives. 

Zaheer caught Asami in his raging eyes and brought around his massive cannon to blast her puny target out of the sky with his teeth gritted. The sound of the weapon tore through sky as he trailed her tail while she maneuvered around the balloon. P’Li saw the size of his rounds and decided the gun needed to go. She slammed down her open palm and send a blast of blue lightning at him, ripping the gun in half in has hands and scorching his palms. He looked furious and she rubbed salt in the wounds with a quick and spiteful salute to her former commander. 

He quickly spotted the mother and daughter attempting to sabotage his victory down below and smiled, tossing his personal woman another mag from her pistol and taking out his own. “Looks like somebody’s working overtime!” He mockingly called out, giving a signal for his sidekick to target them and leave the two flying fish. 

As a team they began to pepper Opal’s position with smaller bullets, making it impossible to cut through the chains. Kuvira caught her in the arm with a stray round, ripping right through her bicep and making the young girl wince in pain. Suyin gasped and grabbed her daughter, hurling her back into the fish. “Come on Opal time’s up” she muttered and exited the kill box before Zaheer or Kuvira could do anymore damage to her little warrior. 

Asami watched as her plan fell to pieces at the hands of Zaheer once again and suddenly another one popped into her manic mind that was surely unravelling due to the stress; she could not tell anymore if she was having repetitive strokes of genius, dumb luck or complete insanity. “Okay Asami any least regrets?” She really did not like the thought she was having but it was the only thing left to try in the time frame remaining to them. It was now or never if they were going to free Korra. “Yeah I really wish I had a better idea than this!”

She slammed down her hand on the control panel and aimed straight for the closest side balloon of the dirigible; she hoped by slamming the fish right into it and grabbing a tray rope in time she could halt the ascension of the balloon if not stop it all together and then formulate another plan to neutralise Zaheer by herself. ‘Not likely Sato!’ The stone fish collided with the fabric of the balloon and Asami ejected herself as fast as she could, grabbing hold tightly of one of the fleeing ropes as the aid let all of its air go. 

Zaheer checked the state of his ascension as the side balloon fell to the ground. “We’re losing altitude!” He turned to Kuvira who was already doing her best to shed the rest of the weight off of the dirigible. “Lighten the load!” He called. 

She tossed out the last barrel something and wiped back her matte black hair, grunting at the workout. “That’s it unless someone wants to jump” she huffed sarcastically while sweating and grabbing for extra breath to cool herself. He crept up behind her with another arrogant smile on his ape like face before suddenly picking her up by her tight hips. 

“Ladies first!” 

He threw her off, causing her gasp and then yell, almost squeal. Luckily for the woman she grabbed the railing and pulled herself back on board with a tug, flying into a kick right at Zaheer’s face. He squirmed, hurt and off balance as he fell to get up stunned. She was huffing again, exhausted from all the moving and now furious at him. 

“You said we were in this together!” She yelled before kicking him again in the face, earning another grunt from his lungs. “You promised me a percentage!” She was about to land another kick in his cheek but he grabbed her foot in mid air with a crazed look of mania and ecstasy in his eyes and he swung her foot around. 

“Next time get it in writing!”

Before she could blink he flung her leg to the left and away from the balloon, off the deck and towards the floor after a fatal drop and with it her entire body followed, followed to her death. “Zaheer!” She let rip into the sky as she fell to her demise. 

He was still smiling however with no remorse in his expression while watching her fall and die. “Nothing personal!”

Asami crept up on him, jumping from rope to rope until she was in the perfect spot to repeat his own process and kick him to a death via gravity; she had to or he was without a doubt going to kill her in a far more gruesome way seconds later. She loosened a clump of rope and swung at him like in the jungle, like an ape woman with her legs out extended. Her feet collided with his face but she couldn’t stop and as she couldn’t he grabbed both her legs as he crashed through the railing and around and down to the bottom ring holding the chains that were in turn holding the capsule with Korra inside. Zaheer slammed her into the foundations and together they both fell onto the lower deck of the balloon bruised and a little beaten but more so was Asami, completely disheveled and unkempt and also overcome by the exhaustion. Zaheer was well more trained for this.

He stood up well before her as she began to cough from landing on her stomach, a little blood coming out over her full and split lips. “Well I’ve got to hand it to you you’re a bigger pain in the neck than I would have ever given you credit for Miss Sato” he mocked as she slowly got to her feet. 

She was delirious, almost hallucinating from the soreness and bruising all over but she flipped, charging at the beefcake looming over her and going for a punch to the face. He grabbed her fist as it came at him and sent it back to her own face with his much more bigger and tougher fist following for a punch. As she staggered back he kicked her in the chest, just below her bust and sent her falling backward through the flimsy safety rail and down. She held on for dear life and the rail got caught in the rotors, stopping them and all sources of ascension with them. She was really coughing up blood now, feeling a sharp pain from her lower abdomen and struggling for breath as she retreated onto the top of the capsule to escape the man hell bent on murdering her now. If not for the natural cocktail of stims and drugs coursing through her system she would either already be dead or completely petrified. Asami could almost feel Korra underneath her however, feel her warmth and affection. Still Zaheer came after her, pulling a fire axe from the deck.

“I consider myself an even tempered man, it takes a lot to get under my skin. But congratulations. You just won the solid gold kewpie doll” he blundered on, clambering down to the chains holding up the capsule with the look of blood in his eyes. 

Kuvira, completely broken in several places, grunted and stirred. She was still alive on the floor of the volcano but only just, just enough to pull her flare pistol from her belt and roll over onto her broken back. She didn’t care she was dying, and that what she planned would certainly finish her off, either way it was better than waiting on the floor for the internal bleeding and broken bones to slowly sap the life from her. At least this way she could take the bastard who killed her with her to the grave. She aimed high, higher than the balloon itself to make sure it was finished and she cocked back the pin, her eyes barely open and her body in so much pain she could barely feel anything her nerves were so overloaded with signals from everywhere. 

“Nothing, personal” she muttered to herself and pulled the heavy trigger, sending the molten flare high in the sky. 

It hit a rock on the side of the volcano shaft and blew up the three remaining side balloons on the mind dirigible, making sure it fell but slowly enough to make sure Zaheer’s defeat was all the more spiteful and stressing, forcing him to watch but unable to win now at all. 

He snapped, grabbing at the axe with all his strength as he moved down more after Asami. He took a swing at her, a heavy swipe to the side forcing her to duck with such fear it nearly made her fall. She scrambled to go lower, onto the door of the capsule as he brought down the fire axe again on the port hole window and into the capsule itself. “I’m just getting warmed up!” He yelled.

She saw Korra in the box. Her eyes were still wide open and white but she was alive and as Asami saw her and felt her, remembering the entire day they spent in that split second she had to think she went straight back to the kiss under the ground in the cavern with nothing but the water around them. She remembered all of it, the feeling, the coolness but not the chill for there was none; the water had been just refreshing and unable to prune her skin as the got closer to the beautiful southern Princess. She remembered Korra’s lips, their texture; they were so plump and full, like making out with a pillow of pure and unadulterated attractive flesh that was sweet to the taste and electric to everything else. She had to save Korra and that now meant only one thing. 

Asami Sato grabbed a piece of the destroyed glass with her right hand and braced herself as Zaheer grabbed her by the neck of her bowel neck tank top, lifting her up and above him, ready to shove the axe right into her body. She closed her eyes and held her breath. She didn’t want to do it but there was no other way now. 

She lunged forward, shoving the spike of broken glass deep into his veiny and tense neck, breaking his stature immediately and forcing him to his knees; Asami landed on her feet and kicked the axe from his grip as he squirmed with blood shooting and dripping from the cut the glass had punctured into his skin. 

Next she had her eyes open and was standing over him unafraid anymore as she saw how beaten he was. She looked him in the eyes and only saw the madness mixed with the shame and humiliation. She had won. “Get. Away. From. Her” she said to him before pulling the glass back out from his neck and letting the gush of blood shoot out until he was completely lifeless on the top of the capsule. Now she had to hurry. She quickly grabbed the axe as the balloon began to buckle and fire from the side balloons spread to the main floatation device. With a mighty swing she cut the chains and rode the capsule as it crashed to the ground, Asami falling away from it and landing with a thud to her back and head just as she had done before. Her vision was blurred and she was dizzy bit from her position she could see the whole dirigible was already coming down on top of her like a meteor.

Asami stood up ragged and almost broken and with all her strength she pushed the whole heavy capsule away from the crash site of the balloon and leaped with it, hoping Korra was safe inside under Raava’s protection. 

The whole mess of mangled metal crashed to the ground with a mighty big bang as the team and the least of the surviving southerners found Asami and the capsule. The ground began to shake suddenly with the force of a terrifying tremor. Bolin was shaken, completely terrified all of a sudden. 

“The volcano” he yelled, putting his hands to his head in worry. “She awakes!” 

P’Li had her least stick of dynamite in her hand for some unknown and probably stupid or sadistic reason. Worse so it was actually lit. “Hey. I had nothing to do with it” she assured them all before noticing her explosive was still lit and with a quick reaction she stuck her thumb and index finger over the wick to extinguish it. 

“This here would be a good place not to be” Bumi called. 

Asami wasn’t done. They simply could not leave Korra here now without getting her out and there was no time at all for that. They would have to tow her by chain and flying fish. She scrambled to grab some chain from the crashed dirigible and hooked it to the top of the capsule. “We can’t leave her here or the whole city will die!” She yelled. 

The rest of the team quickly returned to their vehicles. “And we don’t get out of here we’ll die!” Opal argued. Asami was having nothing of it now. Hell she had literally killed a man.

“It’s the only way to reverse this!” She yelled, tossing the other end of the chain to Suyin in her tuna. “Just do it!” The whole ground was crumbling, letting loose a flurry of steam vents and outbursts of heat while Opal and Asami climbed on board P’Li’s fish with Korra and her box safely secured. 

They took off quickly, perhaps too quickly because as soon as they cleared the land the end of the capsule broke off, leaving Korra to the lava spewing from the crumbling earth. Asami sighed and took a gulp. I am not leaving you here Korra. 

She leaped from the fish and grabbed the chain, running swiftly and with an exhausted limp back to her Princess in the box with the chain. “Asami no!” She heard Opal call out but she wouldn’t listen. She got to Korra in seconds and wrapped the chain around the box, fastening it as tight as she could with the awful sound of the magma seeping in all around her, making her heart race. 

The capsule was secure. “Go!” She roared and P’Li kicked the whole fish into overdrive. The capsule soon took off and with it Asami leaped on and held onto the metal bulkhead for dear life, knowing that if she let go of anything at this speed she would fall and be nothing but less than ash in the wave of lava coming at them and almost the same speed. 

They blitzed through the tunnel and out of the volcano completely in less than two minutes and then covered the lava moat and soon arrived back at the city with the horde of civilians waiting for them. The King’s honour guard cleared the main square for them quickly and P’Li carefully lowered Asami and the capsule while the rest of the team disembarked again from their fish, the lava hitting the wall of the volcano tunnel and threatening to exit any second. 

Asami grabbed a guard’s spear and lodged it deep into the side of the capsule like a crowbar, tugging on it with all the strength she had left inside of her. 

Bolin was going completely crazy as he gawked at the volcano in the distance, the wall of earth gradually glowing until it was no longer brown and green but yellow and orange and the gradients in between. “The fissure is about to eject its pyroplasmic fury!” He yelled while jumping up and down in his tank top and slacks. 

“Asami! Bolin said the wall’s gonna blow!” Suyin reiterated in a louder and more basic vocabulary so Asami could clearly understand. 

The archaeologist made another large tug and the box finally split open to reveal the glowing and angelic Avatar Korra. She was floating, a small tornado of light air under her feet just like the legends had told Asami. She knew Korra could bend all four elements but as the Avatar, and in what appeared to be the fabled ‘Avatar State’ she wielded enough power to moves tectonic plates or move the world into a new kind of orbit if pushed far enough. Asami crumbled to her knees before the Avatar in awe and Korra, or rather Raava, gazed upon her saviour, smiling almost. Then Avatar Korra looked at the lava now spewing out of the volcano tunnel. 

Truly like an angel she began to rise high into the air, to the top of the city orbit and just above the tall spiral tower both Korra and Asami had climbed just yesterday. She held out her palms and like an act of all of the spirits that once lived the waves of lava, magma, earth and water rose from below the city to create a dome of protection made up of the elements with a thin layer of air at the base to cool them all down and make an unbreakable barrier. 

The wave of lava washed over Raava’s barrier of protection slowly, getting trapped in the mixture of the elements as if it were tires against a layer of tar until the flow completely stopped and the lava snapped with a gleam. It was solid in a second, a layer of earth above the dome of the city. 

Again in a snap second the earth began to move, vibrate as the same patterns Asami had seen all around the entrance to and the city itself etched themselves all over the earthy roof of the city. They extended from the top all the way down until they reached the bottom and then the whole thing began to crumble away slowly, running down the sides of the barrier. After several seconds the whole system crumbled, even Raava’s barrier now that the lava was gone and all had slowly returned to normal, leaving only a layer of steam and gas moisture around. 

Asami coughed a little, looking around for any sign of life and finding her team. They were alright; Opal first being spotted with her mother Suyin, then Bolin and P’Li. She found Bumi and Mrs Beifong. They were all fine and alive and so was Asami. But where was Korra? The young and racing archaeologist could not spot her as the steam cleared, not nowhere and now her chest was heaving her, her heart racing. ‘Please tell me she’s alive Raava. I rescued you and her. Tell me she’s alive unlike Aang.’ She had the awful feeling in her gut and tears began to form in her eyes from the lack of Korra. 

‘Please Raava. I love her.’

She felt a sudden chill around her shoulders, as if time was standing still and she was no longer on the world; like she was dead. There was a breeze coming from behind her and as she looked up she could see a ray of light come down from the steam, floating gracefully down it’s chamber was her; Princess and Avatar Korra. She was normal, no white eyes, no celestial aura just Korra, completely and utterly alive. 

She floated down into Asami’s arms peacefully, slowly opening her eyes to reveal the same sapphires Asami had fallen in love with the day before. “Asami?”

Asami Sato was almost balling with tears as she looked deeply into Korra’s eyes, so grateful to have her back and to have her alive, all of her without the spirit. Without thinking she brought he in for a deep and loving kiss. 

In the middle of the embrace Asami winced, a sudden rush and surge of pain taking her over, coming from where she could not pinpoint. She withdrew from Korra and sunk to one knee in the pain. The Princess looked to her love, scanning for something anything that would tell her why Asami was suddenly crippled with pain. Eventually she found it just as Suyin made her way towards Asami. It was so simple. When had it happened? No one knew and it didn’t matter, maybe it was Zaheer lingering on for a least second of revenge. Whatever it was it was taking Asami into a state of shock. 

She had been shot, right in the lower gut just like Tonraq and she was bleeding profusely.


	13. Asami Sato? Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey reaches its end as the team returns to the surface. Asami Sato? She's missing.

“Now,” Varrick sighed, clearing his gruff throat as Zhu Li rushed to his side with a fresh beverage, as well as a tray for the rest of the guests. It was over a month since the events that had transpired in the South and now the last members of the expedition were all landed on his large sofa, two armchairs and, in Bolin’s case, the grand vase. They were all present; Suyin Beifong in her best green dress with metallic jewelry and accessories, her daughter Opal sat beside her in her own best lime green gown and her hair done nice for a change, down in a small black bob with the bangs encroaching over her puffy cheeks. On Su’s other side was her mother, blind as a bat and with a cigarette still in her aged mouth and still in a military blouse and slacks; she was an old woman so she deserved a degree of leniency and discretion. Bumi was dressed rather smartly; a brown and red suit and waistcoat with a golden fob watch and a brown and red cane to match his new bowler hat, looking possibly the smartest out of all of them. P’Li was dressed in a suit as well, of course she would hardly wear a dress. It was just a normal tux, black and white with the accents of her outfit pulled together with Fire Nation red and yellow much like Bumi on her left. Bolin was in a Republic City attire ensemble; a tanned and almost charcoal suit jacket with golden lining and accents with a green waistcoat and white shirt with no tie, not that it mattered as he observed and examined the dirt contents of the peace lily vase next to him. By the way he was looking it over it could have seriously been his wife. 

Mister Varrick took a sip of his beverage, alcoholic and lemon tasting to freshen his throat and making his moustache moist. He was different to how he had been in his basement study when Asami had visited him that fateful night, so much different then again everything was. It was as if the entire world was forever changed after the team had returned and in many ways it had, but only for the eight people currently in the room. 

He lit a cigar and took a single drag before speaking again. “Let’s go over it again,” he instructed him, his tone flat and without the previous crazy fervour. “Just so we’ve got it straight. You didn’t find anything?” He asked them all. Suyin of course was the one who would mostly give the story to the press and academics who would ever ask. ‘The Failure Explorers to the South’ would be the headlines whenever someone found out the expedition had returned without a single scrap of evidence and with all but six members dead or missing. It would all still be so suspicious.

“Nope. Just rocks and some fish” Suyin reported, closing her eyes and remembering the statement from memory as she, and the rest of them except Bolin had memorised. 

“Sponges” P’Li muttered in false correction as she kept looking at her wristwatch, probably figuring out how to reverse engineer it and then reconstruct it as an explosive device. 

Varrick took another smoke of his cigar and then another sip of his drink to instantly wet his chops. He gave a stout nod to Zhu Li to signal her to pass some more out to his guests, his demeanor still flat and out of the enthusiasm he had two months or so ago. “What happened to Kuvira?” He asked the floor. 

Bumi almost burst from his skin. “Well, we lost her sorry but when a flaming dang zeppelin crashed down on her, and then the whole plume of lava swallowed up the rest--” He was cut off at the end by Suyin grabbing his cane and then proceeding to smack it over the top of his head. He then instantly retreated back into himself, realising the whole point of the meeting was to make sure all six of them knew what their cover stories were, and those for Kuvira and Zaheer and the rest. “Uh, missing?” He then asked.

Varrick took another sip, a drag and then hummed in positive affirmation. “That’s right” he confirmed. “And Zaheer?” 

Bumi let out a baffling laugh that came from the base of his throat, emanating in the pit of his stomach. “Well…” He began to trail off. 

“Nervous breakdown” Suyin quickly intervened with a closed eyes smile. 

Bumi took a sip of the lemon drink. “Or you could say that he went completely crazy, acted out and then someone stuck a shard of glass in his neck and then pulled it out, letting all the--” Opal and Suyin both let out a stern and fake cough in a way to tell Bumi to hush. “Well, he’s missing too” he swiftly corrected himself again and continued to drink in a sweet silence. 

Varrick at this point let out a belated and well earned sigh emptying all of his lung capacity before taking another smoke, using up the least of his cigar and gesturing for Zhu Li to bring forth the ash tray. “What about Asami?” 

It was the question that he was dreading to ask, dreading to hear them all say what he had told them to say. In turn they had all been dreading him to ask. All of them were, not just the matriarch and her daughter. It had been lingering over their shoulders during the entire long journey home and now they had to finally fully come to terms with it. With what had happened after Korra had returned from the sky and Asami had noticed she had been shot. They had determined that she must have caught a stray round when Zaheer or Kuvira were firing upon her and P’Li as they formed the decoy to let the Beifongs get close with the saw. That meant she was holding the wound without telltale signs for over ten whole minutes. The most terrible thing was that the bullet was still inside her the entire time and it was only as the adrenaline had subsided and she was calm with Korra in her arms when she finally felt the plethora of pain. 

Suyin silently decided she was to be the one to say it, since Opal was certainly abstaining and even P’Li could not bring herself to forward the fake answer. “Went down with the sub taking the Fisherman’s Account with her” she explained quickly, wanting to get it out and away rapidly so they could move on to the next steps in their movements .

Bolin, meanwhile was getting very friendly with the lily vase by digging himself into the entire thing much like he did with the hole in the ground while they were camping around the firefly chandelier. He made a little laugh and turned off his flashlight. 

“Lord give me strength” Suyin muttered, rubbing her fingers over her forehead while Opal took the cat, Asami’s cat in her lap and stroked it peacefully. The way it acted, it knew Asami was not coming back at all. 

Varrick stood up and walked over the fireplace, taking a stack of the photographs Mrs Beifong took in his hands and began flicking through them, looking at all the majesty and splendor of the South Pole and the Water Tribe and everything. He saw all of them, and Asami, having the time of her life and once he saw her with the biggest smile on her face throughout the trip he couldn’t help but let out another sigh. “I’m going to miss that girl” he stated and took another drink that Zhu Li brought him. He saw a picture of Korra and then another and then more of Asami. “Well. At least she’s in a better place now” he said to himself. 

Lastly, at the bottom of the stack of papers that had been left to him by Asami Sato, Phd, was a small parcel with a single tear in the middle letting a slit of cool and warm blue escape.. He opened up the small package to reveal that the inside was the picture of Asami and her father, the one that Zaheer had stepped on. There was white writing on the picture. 

‘Dear Mister Varrick, I hope this piece of proof is enough of for. It sure was enough for me.’ - Asami Sato, Phd.

He looked closely at the contents; a small and glowing crystal with a most wondrous water held inside, pleasant and cool to the eye, like some form of fairy. He placed it around his neck and suddenly his spirit was lifted, as if a little piece of Asami had made its way to him.

It was the equivalent of night back in the South and Korra was near enough finished with the new headstone. It would be the first and only one of its kind to join the ring of those in the sky. It would be made to look like her father, Tonraq on the cusp of his passing and her ascension to the throne of the South. It wasn’t the only thing that would rise at night. Next to her, on a wheelchair brought with them on the trip, the only damn thing left from the surface that she would ever need, was Asami Sato, bandaged and slightly frail from the last bit of morphine that Suyin had left her. She may have had a gash in her where the matriarch and Korra had dug the bullet out with tools and bending and she may have had stitches crudely to keep her from bleeding, but she was completely, completely alive and well. And now, she would be together with Korra in the place she had spent her entire life fantasizing about. She had the woman of her dreams and the place of her dreams, and for those two thing she would gladly give every other reality she had ever know. For the first in her life, as she held Korra’s hand tightly and watched the headstone of Tonraq float upward to join Raava in the sky, Asami Sato know that her father would be truly proud of her. For she was proud of herself.

The End.


End file.
